The misty as well as the boggy and the glacier-carved valleys of the high Rwenzori form a strange botanical world inhabited by triffid-sized forms of rare lobelia varieties as well as the heather and groundsel, crisp “everlasting flowers,” with garishly coloured mosses and gnarled trees draped with curtains of lichen.

The outcomes are an otherworldly setting which, over decades has been compared to the forests of the Seven Dwarves as well as the Jabberwock and the unavoidable Middle Earth Tolkien’s.

These rare strange plants species rank among the world’s sound botanical riches which can be only got on the highest mountains of East Africa.