Kitulo National Park

Gazetted in 2002, Kitulo was the first national park in tropical Africa created primarily to protect flora rather than large mammals. It covers about 413 square kilometres of plateau grassland between 2,600 and 3,000 metres in the Kipengere Range, north of Lake Nyasa.

Between roughly November and April the grassland erupts into one of the great wildflower displays on the continent — irises, aloes, lilies, red-hot pokers and around 45 species of terrestrial orchid, several of them found nowhere else. The park is also important for birds, including the endangered blue swallow and Denham's bustard, and for the Kipunji, a monkey new to science described in 2005 from the adjacent forests. Kitulo is a hiking and botany destination; there are no game drives.