Burundi : Photos

Discover every day Photographs of the various countries of Africa and the Caribbean

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Over the years, UNHCR has managed numerous large-scale voluntary repatriation programmes that brought millions of refugees home, including these Burundian refugees seen at the border on their return home from Rwanda.
UNHCR / A. Kirchhof / 18 May 2009

Génocide in Burundi

N&B B&W

Platycerium elephantotis (Cabbage Stag Fern, Elephant Stag Fern) - in situ growing on vertical rockwall SW Rwanda 29 Oct 2009 Henk

Something pretty special.
The first photo I'm posting without titling it first, but I can't wait a month until I can afford my new computer before posting this.
Actually the special thing is that in this area of southwestern Rwanda this huge epiphytic fern is growing lithophytically on a vertical cliff wall (the photo is angled slightly from below).

This fern is probably native to most of highland tropical subsaharan Africa, south as far as Dondo in Mozambique, north as far as Sudan, west as far as Guinea, but excluding the low-lying Congo basin. In Rwanda these plants even grow in the capital city of Kigali, distantly high up on the old trees that line the old colonial roads. It is generally a high-level epiphyte in dry forest, at altitudes from about 350m up.
I have gone through all the observational/collection records at the GBIF, including under its synonyms P. angolense & P. velutina, and this is actually the only record I know of proving a Rwandan distribution of this species. The countries it is known to be native to are listed as tags to the right of the photograph. I used the GBIF, but also the origins of the original types used to describe it and its synonyms (Kew, Aluka), and also the observational records in Kew's Flora Zambesiaca.
In these countries a distribution is to be expected, but I can not attest at this time: Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Equatorial Guinea.

Here's the site that helped me to ID this: www.platycerium.co.za/p__elephantotis.htm

DSC00169

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