Melanie Gosling
Environment Writer
A BUNCH of rare and endangered plants, some which were thought to have become extinct within the boundaries of Cape Town, have been found – most of them on private land.
Now CapeNature and the City are working with land-owners to try to get them to conserve these rare plants and to provide incentives like rates rebates.
The City said these new discoveries came at a time when South Africa was facing “a crisis of fynbos being lost to invasive plants and urban sprawl”.
The plants came to light largely because of foot-slogging by a group of local volunteers called the Tygerberg Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW). This group, linked to the Botanical Society, regularly monitors more than 40 sites and hundreds of threatened plant species in Cape Town, and works with officials from CapeNature and the City’s environmental resource management department.
Julia Wood, manager of the biodiversity department, said many of the plants had been found on fragments of veld left over from farming.
“CREW had been doing amazing work. They go on to private land with the owner’s permission and work through the area. Some we found ourselves. The big thing now is to come up with a plan with the landowners to conserve the plants in perpetuity. CapeNature runs the stewardship programme under its Protected Areas Act. Often landowners are willing to conserve once they know how rare it is,” Wood said.
One of the surprise discoveries was the critically endangered Psoralea glaucina, a tiny flower as small as a fingernail, in the area called the Dassenberg Coastal Catchment Partnership (DCCP) in the northern part of the City boundaries. The DCCP, a partnership between conservation authorities and NGOs, was set up to conserve a huge area of high quality biodiversity from Riversands Nature Reserve to the coast.
A new population of endangered Adenogramma rigida was discovered here too.
“That was thought to be extinct, then it was rediscovered in 2009 near Grabouw. Now it has been discovered within the city, which is great.”
A new population of the beautiful Gladiolus griseus, one of the rarest gladiolus species, was found in the dunes near Silwerstroom. Historically it occurred on the West Coast from Saldanha to Milnerton, but “after 100 years of coastal development” these flowers had been reduced to fewer than 250 plants.
“The Cape Flats have really been hammered, so we are trying to save what’s left. It’s amazing what’s still out there,” Wood said.
Renosterveld, a lowland fynbos, has been hammered by agriculture. Less than 5 percent of renosterveld in the Swartland remains, and less than 1 percent is formally conserved.
These pockets of renosterveld, with three or four larger pockets in the city, are key to preserving the last populations of several species “on the brink of global extinction” – including the geometric tortoise. They include Watsonia strictiflora, with one population; Protea odorata, fewer than 10 plants; and Leucospermum grandiflorum, with 15 plants. A separate gene type occurs in the Boland mountains.
melanie.gosling@inl.co.za