Mention the coastal town of Blouberg to Cape Town’s metropolitan elite and you’ll be met with a chorus of disapproval. “Too windy” one will sniff; “and so sandy!” another will chime. True enough about the wind I suppose, though the kite surfers don’t seem to mind. And they are certainly right about the sand; after all, this is where the Sandveld starts, home to one of the most dramatic episodes in the Cape’s ecological year – and it’s playing out right now.

Lachenalia rubidia brightens up even the dullest of days in August; it’s in the Hyacinth family & known as a Sand Viooltjie – Sand Violet – in Afrikaans.

Named for its blue-tinged views of Table Mountain, Blouberg lies a 40-minute drive north of Cape Town on what is known as the West Coast – a modestly-sized area comprising a couple of hundred kilometres of Atlantic-battered coastline and its shrubby hinterland. But – and this probably won’t surprise you – the West Coast is home to a list of plants that rivals the number of species found in the British Isles and has a higher rate of endemic plants than the Cape Peninsula, itself a global hotspot of floral endemism.

It’s hard to believe my claims if you visit Blouberg in mid-summer when the Cape’s heat, wind and aridity are at their peak. But let the winter rains soak the sand and by August things have changed completely. Gone are the bare dunes and brown-stalked flatlands; the West Coast is now a riot of colour as flowers of all description charge out of the sand for a brief but glorious stand in the sun.

Often seen in Sandveld, Common Metallic Longhorn beetles (Promeces longipes) love yellow flowers – this one is a daisy.

The natural vegetation here is dominated by Sandveld, pronounced ‘Sunned Felt’ It’s a type of lowland fynbos in which you’ll find plenty of Restios (the Cape Reeds) but rarely the Protea and Erica (heather) elements you’d normally associate with mountain fynbos. Growing on deep, nutrient-poor sands of recent marine origin (rather than deriving from the local sandstone mountains) the Sandveld blends into other vegetation types such as Strandveld and Renosterveld as it weaves its way around the different geologies of the West Coast.

Tall Restios indicate the presence of Sandveld but the dunes support bushier Strandveld while the hill behind is covered in grassy Renosterveld vegetation.

It makes for a highly diverse set of plants and the landscape also supports more animals and birds than you’d find in the high mountains, something that is obvious when you visit the famous West Coast National Park and see antelope, zebra and ostrich happily grazing away next to the ocean. But you don’t have to go that far. There are plenty of flowers around the Blouberg area and if you make your way to the Erstesteen picnic site on Otto du Plessis Drive then you’ll have to be careful not to trample all over them when you get out of the car. There’s a small nature reserve behind the coastal dunes with a circular walk and the flowers are so prolific that you don’t even need to leave the path to see them.

An explosion of purple reveals Babiana nana, an Iris whose underground corms are dug up & eaten by baboons.

Sandveld has a unique character to it; it is obviously not as florally diverse as the fynbos a few miles away on Table Mountain and it is often dominated by monotypic stands of thick bushes – notably Blombos (Metalasia muricata) and Trichocephalus stipularis, known as Dog Face in English but Hondegesiggie in Afrikaans – best pronounced in private if you are not an Afrikaans speaker. It does, however, have a couple of botanical aces up its sleeve.

The first is that the Sandveld supports great numbers of annuals – the type of plant that only lasts a year (and usually absent from mountain fynbos). Mostly in the Daisy and Figwort families (Asteraceae and Scrophulariaceae if you’d like to get technical), these annuals are responsible for the sheets of colour you see swaddling the roadsides in the Cape late winter. The daisies are obvious to pick out thanks to their simple flowers and bright primary colours but if it’s a bit of a weirdo flower you’re looking at, then chances are it’s a ‘Scroph’.

A typical West Coast scene in August & September – massed annuals of the Daisy family.

The Cape Snapdragon (Nemesia affinis) is a ‘Scroph’ & is called a Leeubekkie in Afrikaans – Lion Mouth.

The other trick is that the Sandveld goes big on perhaps the most interesting and enigmatic plants of all – the geophytes. Spending most of their life underground as – for example – a bulb, the geophytes contain some real beauties and many are shockingly rare. You’ll know some of them – Gladioli and Freesias, Arum lilies and Hyacinths – but most will be new, even if you are familiar with fynbos bulbs.

Like wispy ghosts, the pale petals of Babiana tubulosa rise out of the sand, sometimes painted with red chevrons, sometimes not.

The very earliest European explorers to the region reported evidence of large animals – even elephants – in the Sandveld but cattle ranching and agriculture have taken over the most productive areas, especially in the interior where the shale and granite soils are fertile. Lower your expectations for animals however and you will be rewarded in the Sandveld; during my last walk in the Blouberg Reserve I saw tortoises, mongooses and a Cape grysbok (a small, twitchy-eared antelope) as well as many insects and birds, filling the air with pleasant hums, buzzes and whistles.

Big aggressive thorns are an indicator of Strandveld plants: they once had to defend their nutritious leaves against large herbivores such as eland & buffalo.

Angulate tortoises (Chersina angulata) are relatively common in the Cape’s coastal habitats & why not – South Africa has the world’s highest diversity of tortoises.

And had I been walking there 500 years ago, I would have heard human sounds too, not that I would have understood them. The indigenous Khoisan would have been foraging in the Sandveld at this time of year, calling out to each other when they found a prize or two. They were after food of course – several Iris bulbs can be boiled and eaten – but they were also collecting pungent buchus (Citrus family) whose leaves were dried, powdered and applied like a talc. Other items on the shopping list would have been Sand Olive (Dodonaea viscosa var. angustifolia) for its effectiveness against fevers and the bulb of Amaryllis disticha for its poisonous juice, perfect for smearing over the tip of an arrow. Ostrich nests would have been raided for eggs, tortoises caught and roasted, and coastal seal colonies plundered for pelts – this was a relatively rich land compared to the silent uplands of the Cape mountains.

Useful plants for foraging humans: in the foreground are edible, asparagus-like flower stalks of Trachyandra & behind is an emerging flower stalk of Albuca major, chewed to ward off thirst.

Go now: the West Coast flowers keep going in intensity and diversity as August turns into September but there is a definite drop off in flowers and colour as we reach October and by Christmas you’ll be wondering what the fuss was all about. Until next August, when it all starts again.

My personal Sandveld favourite; the Starfish Iris (Ferreria crispa) – designed to resemble a gaping, infected wound & with a smell to match; flies love them.