Signboard on the 'Rooted in Time' self-drive tour of the Knysna forests in the Garden Route National Park. https://www.sanparks.org/parks/garden_route/

1. Experience the Knysna forest through the eyes of renowned author, Dalene Matthee.
“She walked through the trees, up a hill, every
step bringing a different fragrance: a gardenia was
blooming somewhere, white elder-honey dripping
from a bee’s nest. Somewhere a genet slept. A wild
pig, a bushbuck. A mouse was giving birth in a
nest of leaves. A cross-berry was in flower. Toad-
stools that smelled like bread. Another chestnut.
Butterflies that smelled of the earth. A wild
honeysuckle was in blossom and the small blue
butterflies that played around it smelled like milk.
It was a magic forest, a dreamforest where life was
a dream, even if you were awake.”
A glimpse of the magic of the forest...
KarolienaKapp’s
dream-likeexperience
oftheforest
“She always won against the bush-loerie (Narina
trogon). She simply hooted eight times through her
lips and hid herself in the undergrowth. The
bush-loerie is inquisitive and will always come
closer to see where you are. Somewhat dim-witted,
it always hooted again to find out if you would
answer. But when it saw you were a human, it
didn’t want to play anymore.”
“Somewhere above her head in the forest canopy
BIRDS
“They were as mysterious as the deepest forest
gorge where few dared to venture, they could con-
verse with one another in a secret code so
that one of them could quickly drag away the
bushbuck – under the keepers’ nose – that lay
strangled in an illegal snare. They admitted their
deepest fears with the frankness of children,
shared their last piece of bread or sweet potato
with each other; took the axe from a weak one’s
hands and hacked his wood for him. They climbed
the highest cliffs in the foothills of the mountains
to reach a beehive for a little sweetness – or to
brew some honey beer for a little gaiety.”
“Woodcutters sometimes made the most beautiful
pieces of furniture for their simple homes without
realising they were works of art.”
WOODCUTTERS
“A plantation is different from a forest.
The one is God-made, the other man-made;
one is needles, the other leaves; one stands
in rows, the other in freedom.”
FORESTS&PLANTATIONS
Through Dalene Matthee's books,
the stories of the Knysna Forest
took on a new life. We followed Saul
Barnard and Old Foot on the forest
footpaths in Circles in a Forest. We
got to know the people of the forest
in Fiela's Child and The Mulberry
Forest. And we got a glimpse of the
magic of the forest through
Karoliena Kapp in Dreamforest.
Dalene's special relationship with
the Knysna Forest started in 1978
when she first visited the forest. In
Dreamforest (Toorbos), Matthee's
intimate knowledge of and insight
into the forest, as well as her
genuine caring for the trees, flowers
and animals of the Knysna Forest
once again became evident.
Here are a few excerpts from
Dreamforest (Toorbos):
a loerie was gurgling and hissing to warn the
elephant that there was a human walking along
the sledpath… the bird was the elephant’s friend,
a tell-tale that always alerted him when a human
was close by.”
DALENEMATTHEE'SKNYSNA

2. The famous, elusive Knysna elephants belong to
the same genus and species as all South African
elephants:
Scientificclassification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammal
Superorder: Afrotheria
Order: Proboscidea
Family: Elephantidae (Gray, 1821)
Genus & species: Loxodonta africana
(Blumenbach, 1797)
Afrikaans:Olifant
Xhosa:Indlovu
abouttheknysna
elephants
Elephant herds divide themselves into female
families (adult female relatives and their young),
which are led by matriarchs (the oldest, most
experienced cows in each group). Young bulls
leave their families at about 13 years of age - either
to live alone or in all-male herds.
In areas where multiple families live in relatively
close proximity to one another, a number of
families may form a ‘bond group;’ and where
numbers of bond-groups occur in a single region,
they may form super-groups known as ‘clans.’
socialstructure
When a sexually mature bull enters a state of
reproductive readiness he’s said to be ‘in musth’
(from the Hindi term for ‘intoxication’). At this
time, the animal will experience increased levels
of testosterone (up to 60 times its normal load) and
its temporal ducts, (which are situated midway
between the eye and the ear) will excrete a thick,
strong-smelling fluid called temporin.
Bulls in musth become extremely aggressive.
When a dominant bull in musth approaches a
herd, the older females will allow it access to the
female in oestrus - but they’ll block the way for
younger males (which may or may not be in
musth). Since it means that only the largest, most
dominant bulls are able to cover the females,
musth may therefore act as a barrier to inbreeding.
MUSTH
The famous, elusive
Knysna elephants...
Elephants, humans, and Neanderthals are the only
mammals known to exhibit (or have exhibited in
the case of the Neanderthals) any rituals for burial
of the dead.
Elephants will often stand quietly over a dead
animal (or human) for up to two days after
discovering the body, and will cover it with leaves,
branches, and sand before moving away. They’re
also known to revisit burial sites over many years.
This may be the root of the old myth of an
‘elephant graveyard’ - a secret place where
elephants went to die.
burial
Elephants rely heavily on their highly developed
sense of smell:
“When I try to understand what an elephant is
thinking and feeling, I first watch its trunk and see
where its attention is focused... The tip of an
elephant’s trunk is almost never stationary,
moving in whichever direction it finds interesting.”
- Dr. Joyce Pool, co-founder of Elephant Voices
Senseofsmell
Elephants communicate in various ways:
Visually
Elephants use a sophisticated sign language that
employs a series of gestures and postures
(displays).
COMMUNICATION
African elephants live in highly
ordered family groups. The largest
land mammals in the world, they
can reach up to 4 metres in height,
up to 6,350 kg in weight, and up to
70 years in age.
oftheknysnaforest
Touch
Elephants use all parts of their bodies to touch one
another purposefully.
Chemically
Elephants gather detailed information from one
another though odours found in urine, faeces,
saliva, and secretions from glands such as the
temporal gland.
Acoustically
We humans are able to hear many of the
elephants’ calls - trumpeting, snorts, barks, grunts,
cries - but they also employ low-frequency
rumbling noises, which they can hear from as far
as 10 km away. People once believed that these
rumbling noises came from the elephant’s
stomach, but in fact they’re created in the same
way as the human voice: air from the lungs is
passed over the larynx (vocal chords) - which in
African elephants can reache a length of about
75 mm.