Some indigenous plants avoid the Summer drought altogether by being dormant during the dry season.

• Some plants, known as “annuals”, complete their entire life cycle in a single year (See Rain Daisy life cycle below).

• The Rain Daisy (see poster) is an example of an annual.

• The Rain Daisy is one of the most common Spring flowers in the Cape. Thousands of visitors travel to see the flowers each year in Namaqualand and along the West Coast. Many of these flowers are annuals like the Rain Daisy and Namaqualand Daisy.

Did you know?

Other plants that disappear during the dry Summer months are deciduous geophytes. During the dry season they have no leaves and their bulbs and corms remain dormant underground.

These plants start growing when the first rains start in Autumn.

Most geophytes like Arum Lilies, Viooltjies and Watsonias produce their leaves and flowers at the same time. They flower in Winter or Spring and produce seeds. The leaves die back as Summer returns. Both the seeds and the underground storage organs lie dormant in the soil during Summer.

• The Candelabra Flower (Brunsvigia orientalis)produces leaves and flowers at different times. The large red flower heads emerge in Autumn before the leaves start to grow.

• The flower heads dry out and small berries form at the ends of the branches.

• When it is ripe, the dry seed head breaks off and gets blown around in the veld, dropping its berries as it goes. The seeds inside these fruit start growing immediately, and are watered by the Winter and Spring rains.

• The leaves of the Candelabra Flower start to grow in Winter. The leaves die back as Summer returns.

• Geophytes store much of the food they produce by photosynthesis underground in their bulbs or corms. This stored food is used to produce the first leaves or flowers in the next growing season.
• Look for the following geophytes on the poster: Arum Lily, Bobbejaantjie, Candelabra Flower, Gladiolus, Kukumakranka, Moraea, Orchids, Sorrel, Uintjies, Viooltjie and Watsonia. They are some of the most beautiful flowers in the veld.

Photosynthesis is a long word - but it describes one of the most important and magical processes on Earth. The word is made up of two parts: photo means “light” and synthesis means “to make”. Photosynthesis is the amazing ability of plants to make high-energy sugars by combining light energy with two very simple, common substances: water and carbon dioxide.

The leaves of plants are “photosynthesis factories” where sunlight, water and carbon dioxide are combined to form sugar:

• Leaves grow towards the light and their green colouring absorbs light energy.

• Carbon dioxide in the air enters the leaves through stomata.

• Water from the soil reaches the leaves via tubes in the roots and stems.

Transpiration also takes place in the leaves. Transpiration is the loss of water from a plant through the stomata.
Water makes up between 75% and 90% of the plant and is essential for its survival. It is also an important raw material for photosynthesis.

Plants must balance these two processes in their leaves: They need to absorb as much light as possible for photosynthesis, but they also need to reduce the amount of water lost by transpiration. Ideally, leaves should be large to capture lots of sunlight for photosynthesis. But large leaves lose lots of water due to transpiration. In Fynbos, many plants have small leaves because there is lots of sunlight available but water is in short supply during Summer.