INDIGENOUS PLANTS/ FYNBOS OF THE GARDEN ROUTE

The Garden Route is an important part of the Cape Floral Kingdom – the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms and the only floral kingdom that is confined within the borders of a single country.

This region boasts more than 6500 indigenous plant species and many bird and wildlife species offering the visitor a memory of a lifetime. The Garden Route's indigenous plants are a unique mixture of Cape Fynbos and Forest Species and offer a range of eco-tourism activities in the way of hiking, bird watching etc.

Fynbos can be defined as a shrubland with an unusual mixture of plant types of different shapes and sizes that have been termed, "growth forms". There are four of these growth forms; the proteoids - tall protea shrubs with large leaves; the ericoids – heath-like shrubs; reed-like plants – the restoids; and bulbous herbs – the geophytes.

The Cape Fynbos is a wonder of the world. It is the term given to a collection of plants (a vegetation type) that are mainly shrubs and is comprised of species belonging to South Africa's southwestern and southern Cape. Fynbos makes up four-fifths of the Cape Floral Kingdom, which covers an area of less than 90 000 square kilometres (the size of Malawi or Portugal) and hosts 8 600 plant species.

So special is the Cape Floral Kingdom that it has been designated as one of the earth's six plant kingdoms, alongside for instance, the Boreal Forest Kingdom. The Cape Floral Kingdom contains 526 of the world's 740 erica species, 96 out of the world's 160 gladiolus species and 69 proteas out of 112 on earth.

The diversity of fynbos plants is greater than that of the tropical rainforests, with over 9000 species of plants occurring in the area, around 6200 of which are endemic, i.e. do not occur anywhere else in the world. Of the Ericas, 600 occur in the fynbos kingdom, while only 26 are found in the rest of the world. Although the Fynbos comprises only 6% of the area of southern Africa it has half the species on the subcontinent, and in fact has almost 1 in 5 of all plant species in Africa.

It is important to protect indigenous species because they have often evolved to cope with particular conditions, circumstances or situations. Fynbos, for example, has evolved to cope with veld fires and, in many cases, requires the smoke and heat of the fire to germinate its seeds.

There are many indigenous species that have been found to contain unique properties, which have been used to develop specialised drugs, which have saved thousands of lives. Once indigenous plants become extinct, they are lost forever.

An important aspect of fynbos conservation is that many species have such a tiny range that ploughing a field, or building a single house can wipe out the entire world population of a unique form of life. Part of the dilemma is whether or not to tell members of the public where a rare species occurs so that they can keep an eye on it. This may put the species at risk to unscrupulous collectors and cultivators. The alternative of keeping this knowledge secret might lead to sympathetic landowners destroying plants out of ignorance.

The Cape Flora is ecologicaly very delicately balanced. Alien species readily become established in fynbos and displace the native plants and animals. As a result of this, combined with the naturally limited range of many species, urbanisation and the spread of agriculture, numerous fynbos plants are now seriously endangered or extinct.