Back to town, paperwork awaits. We have to sign the final Material Transfer Agreement to allow me to take our specimens out of Tanzania tomorrow. This is not my favourite part, I would much rather be back in the cloud forest. Sorting collections, using the herbarium to identify what we collected, making sure everything is fully dry, and separating the collections into the set that will stay at the University of Dar es Salaam and other sets to go to the Natural History Museum London and the University of Utah. It has been an amazing trip!

My boots have just dried out from Ruvu forest, but they didnt stay dry for long. Another drenched soaking wet day today.

We climbed up Chensema in the rain inside a cloud, and tried to find our target species in the cloud forest at 2100 m elevation. The dripping wet grass and shrubs made it difficult to move forward, the paths were narrow, and everything was washed out and slippery. Steep paths up to the forest were the worst.

Usually the paths are raised and narrow, just wide enough for one foot. When the rain starts it is impossible to step without slipping. I was worried about going down that path and falling.

We were several hours away from a road and getting help would have been difficult. Eventually we gave up and returned early. The cloud forest just is not passable in this weather, and we had been wet and tired for many hours.

Inside a cloud in the Uluguru cloud forest – it is not possible to see anything very much and it is difficult to move forward in this vegetation.

We got soaked to the skin and carried on walking through rice fields for many hours. I put my belongings in plastic bags, inside other plastic bags, but the papers and my notebook still got wet. It was a warm and pleasant temperature but everything was totally drenched, and my boots were full of water all day, and we didnt have any food. We were back in Ruvu Forest, making another attempt to find the new Solanum species that may be extinct. We reached the place where it was originally collected in 2001. This turned out to be a dense thicket of spiny lianas climbing over strange-shaped limestone rocks, the only place unsuitable for cultivation and so not cleared for farming. I spent a while climbing inside it looking for the Solanum. It wasnt there, but I found a stinging liana instead, and I now have large red welts all over my arms - would be interesting to know what species it was. We got lost in the mixed mosaic cultivation of rice, maize, and sesame, in spite of walking with several local guides. Our car got stuck in the mud and had to be pushed out by numerous local villagers. I was very relieved when we were back on the tarmac road. All the streams swelled during the day and if we could not get out of there, we would have had to spend the night in the forest and order a tractor to pull us out tomorrow.

Eric and I are soaked to the skin, trying to shelter from the rain in a small farmer’s hut. The roof was leaking and the rain showed no sign of stopping, so we had to carry on going.

Finally back on the main road! These roads become completely impassable when the rainy season starts properly, and we were lucky to get out of there without getting seriously stuck.

Preparing to leave after our stay at the Hilton. David is tying the presses to the car roof so the specimens can dry in the sun.

I am worried our specimens are not drying fast enough. The plant dryer has been running at nights but this is not good enough to dry everything in the rainy season. All the cardboards and presses we brought are full of specimens, and if they do not dry in the next few days they might start becoming mouldy. Today looked like it might be sunny and David tied the presses to the roof of the car so the air would blow through the holes in the sides of the cardboard, drying out the plants between the cardboard. It was a nice day on the road, stopping every now and again to see what is growing nearby. Frank has done a lot of ethnobotanical work in Tanzania and knows what is safe to eat. We have been trying a few new plant species every day. Most of them are sour or strange-tasting. Today’s Cordia sinensis is my favourite so far, it has a sweet and refreshing taste.

Cordia sinensis is an important food source for the hunter gatherer bushmen living in western Tanzania. We tried the berries and they are really sweet.

The Southern Highlands of Tanzania are much cooler than the rest of the country, with plantations of tea and quinine. Driving through the tea plantations and the tea factories the smell is amazing. In every village there is a “kijueni” – resting place on the main road where the men gather to hang out and chat, while women meet each other inside houses and in back gardens. As we drove past I saw a kijueni underneath a large shady shrub of Solanum thomsonii, the species endemic to the Southern Highlands.

Flowers of quinine, Cinchona grandis, growing in a quinine plantation.

Eric and Frank at the back of the car on the bumpy road.

The endemic Solanum thomsonii differs from the closely related Solanum aculeastrum by its numerous small orange fruits.

As soon as we drive out of Mbeya town and turned around a corner, the rare endemic Solanum thomsonii was everywhere, growing all down the road. It often grows mixed together with the closely related Solanum aculeastrum, and there seem to be some plants intermediate between the two species. We spent most of the day observing these and making collections. It is difficult to concentrate because as soon as we start work more and more children come running from all directions! They are friendly and want to talk to us, but after many hours I get tired – do not think I would make a very good school teacher!

Eric preparing specimens of Solanum thomsonii. We usually arrive at a hotel late at night and press the plants we collected after dinner; it is usually dark and we have to work by torchlight.

Disappointing day today. We were hoping to collect in the mount Kilimanjaro Catchment Forest Reserve, outside the boundaries of the Kilimanjaro National Park. My research permit does not cover collecting in National Parks – to do that I should have applied for a different permit several months ago. We drove all the way to Kilimanjaro and found out that the boundaries of the National Park have been moved to include the lower forests, in order to give better protection to all the ecosystems, as the rules regarding National Parks are a much stricter. We returned to Arusha and spent some time processing our earlier collections. All the plants pressed between newspapers need to become completely dry, and we brought a special plant dryer with us to do this.

Plant dryer built by Frank. Jelly fuel is burned in a small stove underneath the box, and hot air rises through the newspapers containing specimens. Everything is covered in a blanket to keep the heat inside. David is standing next to the dryer; he has to add more fuel every 3 hours at night.