The rainy season has finally started properly and it is very wet in the savanna. All my things are in large plastic bags. It is too wet to press specimens outside and we leave everything in car until we get to the dry hotel. The local Masai people have given us information on Solanum setaceum, and helped us find Solanum arundo. It would be really good to find Solanum dennekense without driving much further west, but none of the local people know a plant marching its description.

There is a giant flying cockroach in my hotel room, about 4 cm long!

The Masai with Eric and me, near a small clump of Solanum setaceum, in the savanna near the Kenyan border. They tell us it is called “endemelwa” in the Masai language.

Frank’s family who searched for Solanum in the West Usambara forest near their village. Frank is in the green shirt.

Frank phoned his family and asked them to search for Solanum around their home village in the West Usambaras before we arrived. Collecting was fast and successful once we knew where the plants were. In Frank’s village people speak the Shambaa language. When a boy becomes an adult up he builds his own house from wood and clay soil. Many people work on the local tea plantations. Tea plants in some plantations are 70 years old! Coffee was also grown here a few years ago, but after coffee prices fell they stopped growing it and that land is now bare. Making a profit from agriculture is difficult even when you have good land like here. People say that 20 years ago it was easier to make a living because the rains were predictable and people planted the crops at the right time; now it is impossible to predict when the rains will come so people are less willing to invest in agriculture.

We spent all day searching dry coastal forests and beach thickets in the Pangani area, looking for Solanum usaramense. Everything in the costal forest is spiny, it is dry and hot, and it is difficult to move forward because of all the lianas. The only thing we found was cultivated aubergines (Solanum melongena). Frustrating. We came to Tanzania in March because it is the middle of the long wet season and everything should be in flower. Unfortunately this year the rains are late and everything is dry. I am worried that it is too dry for Solanum usaramense to have any flowers and fruits - if there is nothing except branches and small leaves it is almost impossible to recognise it among all the other vegetation. I wanted to give up and go to wetter upland forest tomorrow, but colleagues persuaded me to try again tomorrow.

Dry coastal forest is spiny: Carissa edulis

Me pressing a specimen of the Uluguru Mountain endemic Solanum inaequiradians

Today was very intense! We found Solanum dasyphyllum (growing in mountains all over Africa, with large and wide spiny leaves), Solanum stipitatostellatum (Tanzanian endemic with many curved spines, sterile), Solanum inaequiradians (Uluguru endemic never discovered on this mountain before, with long thread-like calyx lobes), Solanum schliebenii (very rare endemic with bizzare floppy bristles on the stem, we were hunting for it all day), and Solanum aethiopicum (the Scarlett Eggplant, commonly cultivated for food). We walked from 9pm to 7pm in 35 degrees C, up a steep slope, and I dont feel so great now. There are no roads up to the Tegetero forest and local villagers go up a narrow steep trail for many hours carrying bananas to the market. I fell down a slippery slope in the forest, and rolled downhill for about 5 metres, luckily it was soft and all I have is a few cuts. I would like to write more but I am too tired.

Tegetero forest: we walked all the way up here!

Margaritaria discoides on the hill behind Morogoro University

Today we drove from Dar es Salaam to a town called Morogoro, in the Uluguru Mountains. We arranged for official permission to collect in the Uluguru Nature Reserve and in the Ruvu forest for the next three days, and we had a little bit of time left before sunset to go plant hunting. Herbarium specimen records show that Solanum goetzei grows behind the Morogoro University. We drove there and walked around the forest but could not find Solanum goetzei or any other Solanum species. I have only seen this species pressed flat on a herbarium specimen, and it is difficult to imagine how it would look when it is growing wild.

The area was quite dry, maybe too dry for this species, but we do not know enough to be sure. A bit disappointed, really. But we saw really nice trees of Margaritaria discoides.

I arrived at the Julius Nyerere International airport in Dar es Salaam at 7.30 this morning. Frank Mbago from the Dar es Salaam University herbarium met me. Working with the collections all day after not much sleep on the flight is pretty exhausting.. We are back at the airport now waiting for Eric Tepe from the University of Utah, who will be coming plant hunting with us.

View from my hotel room in Dar es Salaam