Talking Plants in South Africa Spring in the western Cape of South Africa is like nowhere else in the world, Ketzel Levine finds. On Morning Edition, the Doyenne of Dirt checks her sanity at the gate and reports on the three weeks she spent in a floral fantasy.

See a photo gallery of Namaqualand

Gladiolus alatus Photo: Ketzel Levine Enlarge this image

Kirstenbosch Gardens Photo: Ketzel Levine

Keith Wiley in the wild Photo: Ketzel Levine

One Gorgeous Morea Photo: Ketzel Levine

October 23, 2002 -- Namaqualand. The Great Karoo. The Cape Floral Kingdom. I know these names are not merely sentimental, but put them all together and they spell Oz. Just turn those fields of red poppies into melon-orange daisies, spill them into ditches and onto the roads, and for a backdrop, dribble fistfuls of wet sand along blue-shrubbed hills.

Hey, I've got pictures to prove it.

My trip to see the wildflowers of South Africa's Western Cape -- an area one-sixth the size of California -- has turned me into a lunatic. I now walk the streets of Portland and hallucinate neon meadows of bulbs. I pass vacant lots and scan the debris for electric currents of annuals. I drive around with my head out the window hoping for a whiff of chocolate-scented shrubs.

I'm not making it up. We really did find such a shrub: Chrysanthemoides monilifera. Not all that pretty -- generic yellow daisy flowers -- but with a scent like cocoa, who needs looks? As for the neon bulbs, I swear we found a Romulea species (think inch-high tulips) the color of a '50s aluminum tumbler. And in a town called Nieuwoudtville, fields literally glowed under the lights of a million electric yellow Cotula (think mouse-sized shower heads balanced on threads).

While there is such a thing as a bad year for wildflowers, this wasn't it. In that respect, we were fabulously lucky. But there's no way we would have found the treasures we did without our guides, Rod and Rachel Saunders. They are experts in the country's flora and make their living collecting seed (legally, I hasten to add), which they offer through their mail-order nursery, Silverhill Seeds.

But even the Saunders would not have been on our trip if not for the woman who put the tour together. At the risk of sounding like I'm accepting an Oscar, I owe garden writer Lauren Springer a debt of thanks. FYI, our tour operator was Geostar Travel.

I'd also like to put in a shameless commerce plug for the nurserymen I traveled with, each of whom sell wonderful, legitimately-collected plants: Dan Hinkley of Heronswood Nursery; David Salman of High Country Gardens; and Greg Starr of Starr Nursery.

OK, I'm done.


Also in Our Plants of South Africa Series:

Uh Oh, Here Come the Holiday Snaps

South Africa at Froggy Bottom

How to grow South African Bulbs

Books! Web sites! Bottomists!