Mpumalanga

So this was last month, but here's the lowdown on my trip to Mpumalanga. I didn't really have business out there, but I had some time and wanted to get out of my corner of Pretoria.
So I went out with Izette, one of the FABIans to Mpumalanga, which is to the east towards Mozambique and Swaziland.
We had a few items on the agenda; checking on some bleeding oaks (not native here), attending a field day for foresters, so Izette could give a talk on some insect and disease problems, sampling soil and water for the pitch canker fungus, and checking some insect traps for an experiment.

Here's a pic of the FABI bakkie (pick-up), with Izette and panga (machete)

We spent that night in Piet Retief, which almost rhymes with Petri Dish. The next day we spent with the foresters, and got out to see some of what goes on in the plantations here. It's all eucalyptus and pines down here, all exotic. Here's a bunch of foresters dressed in their traditional forestry gear.

And their rides, quite an array of white bakkies.

Here they are checking out a tractor with a mulching apparatus. Boys and their toys.

Then, it was off to Barberton, which is a border post into Swaziland, for the pitch canker work. We had a heckuva storm that night, which made the weather go from quite warm to rather cool very quickly. The next day was a bit wet and cool, but fortunately I had all my cool weather stuff with me, which isn't very much because it's supposed to be summer here.
We sampled from some insect traps for Cossid moth, which is also known as goat moth because of the enchanting aroma the bugs produce. It affects eucalyptus plantations like this one here above.
Also, the pitch canker work, which was done in some nurseries. Here's a young plantation of loblolly pine, ol' Pinus taeda, native to the southeastern US of A. It's a big one in this region, as is P. elliottii (slash pine) and P. pinaster (a European sp.). Driving up into the older pine plantations was like turning a corner from South Africa into Colorado.
Then we went back to Piet Retief for more soil and water sampling, as well as picking up some sick seedlings to check them for pitch canker as well.
That's the short version. More to come...