Botany Tours

Almost all ecosystems on Earth have plants at their base. Through photosynthesis plants create the carbohydrates that feed all herbivores. Their flowers offer food to insects, birds and mammals, and the carbon they sequester creates soil. They're fundamental to life on Earth. They're also bewitchingly beautiful and add colour to almost every natural landscape. Flowers are to be seen on our tours across the world, from tropical forests to arctic tundra, but on a number of our trips their great beauty is the main focus.

Nowhere on Earth is the bewildering diversity of flowers more apparent than in South Africa, where we explore both the endemic flora of the fynbos on the Cape and the stunning carpets of flowers for which Namaqualand is famous. In Europe, we offer a range of natural history tours prominently featuring wildflowers. We visit the Dordogne in early summer, just as orchids, pinks, rockroses and countless others bloom. Likewise, we visit the beautiful Mediterranean island of Crete in spring, as its incomparable flora comes into flower.

Southern marsh orchid

Still a fairly common UK orchid, this gorgeous plant can be identified by its spikes of waxy magenta blooms. It flowers in early summer in fens and wet alkaline grassland in lowland England and Wales. It can be seen in the Somerset Levels and, alongside much rarer species including fen orchid, marsh helleborine and early marsh orchid, in early summer in Norfolk.

 

King protea

The national flower of South Africa, this striking plant has the largest blooms of the genus Protea. It's emblematic of the botanically dazzling fynbos region of the Cape, where it's loved by the remarkable Cape sugarbird. Along with many other members of its genus, and countless other plants from its remarkable landscape, it can be seen in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden on our Spring Flowers from the Cape to the Kalahari holiday.

 

Red helleborine

Though very rare in the UK, the delicate red helleborine has a wide distribution in Southern Europe, North Africa and South-west Asia, where it's found on well-drained soils in light forest, often of beech or pine. It's said that the more alkaline the soil on which it grows, the darker its lovely pink flowers. This beautiful plant is seen commonly on our Butterflies, Birds & Wildflowers of the Dordogne holiday.

Mountain avens

This beautiful member of the rose family is among the defining flowers of tundra, right round the Arctic, and similar habitats in high mountains in the Northern Hemisphere. Its cheerful creamy flowers, with abundant pollen-laden stamens, are important for insects during the brief arctic summer. It can be seen on our voyage to Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen and high in the Canadian Rockies.

 

Cretan sowbread

All but endemic to the magical isle of Crete, the exquisite Cretan sowbread or cyclamen is just one of around 20 members of its genus around the Mediterranean. Whereas some of these lovely members of the primrose family flower in autumn or even winter, the delicate white blooms of Cretan sowbread can be seen on our Spring Flowers & Birds trip, and are common in many parts of the island.

 

Welwitschia mirabilis

Endemic to the Namib Desert, between Namibia and Angola, Welwitschia mirabilis is the sole representative of its family of plants. This extraordinary plant only ever grows two leaves, which become shredded and torn during its incredible lifespan (some plants are considered to be 2,000 years old). Ancient specimens of Welwitschia mirabilis can be seen in the Namib-Naukluft on our safaris in Namibia.