Flower Power — the Cape Floral Kingdom

Cape Floral Kingdom

Here in South Africa, we’re really quite proud of all the cool stuff our coun­try has to offer. You’ve heard us wax lyr­ical about our moun­tains, our game reserves, our wild­life, our beaches, and just gush in gen­eral about South Africa’s nat­ural beauty (not to men­tion its world-class hotels, res­taur­ants, bars, nightlife…).

So small won­der that here’s yet another part of the coun­try we want to tell you about: The Cape Floral Kingdom.

Of the six floral king­doms in the world, ours might be the smal­lest, but, as the old adage goes, it’s not the size that mat­ters. You see ... it’s also the only floral king­dom occur­ring entirely within one coun­try.

Yep ... it’s all ours.

King Protea

The Cape Floral Kingdom is com­prised of eight pro­tec­ted areas encom­passing some 550 000 hec­tares of land between the Cape Peninsula and the Eastern Cape. That’s quite a garden, so why go to all the trouble of pro­tect­ing it? Well, botan­ic­ally speak­ing, the region is ‘of out­stand­ing uni­ver­sal sig­ni­fic­ance’ – so says Unesco, who declared it a National Heritage Site in 2004, thanks to some pretty stag­ger­ing stat­ist­ics. Get ready for some numbers ...

Of the 9 600 spe­cies of plant in the Kingdom, at least 70% are endemic, mean­ing it has more types of indi­gen­ous plants than any other place on earth. And its diversity is almost unreal: though the region occu­pies less than half a per­cent of South Africa’s total sur­face area, it is home to nearly 20% of its flora. The Table Mountain sec­tion alone boasts more dif­fer­ent plant spe­cies than there are in the entire United Kingdom (so our Kingdom’s cooler than yours!).

Disa Uniflora

The Cape Floral Kingdom is com­posed mostly of fyn­bos (mean­ing ‘fine bush’ in Afrikaans and refer­ring to the fine, needle-like leaves of many spe­cies), a biome (that’s basic­ally sci­ence talk for a really big fam­ily) that is endemic to the region. It is these par­tic­u­lar plants that give the region its impress­ive biod­iversity brag­ging rights, as well being inter­est­ing in their own right.

Fynbos spe­cies are pretty unique in their repro­duct­ive and fire-adaptive strategies, mak­ing the Cape Floral Kingdom incred­ibly valu­able to sci­ence. Because the hardy little shrubs are prone to burn­ing, seeds only ger­min­ate after feel­ing the intense heat of a fire — Charles Darwin would’ve been really proud.

Incidentally, the Cape Floral Kingdom also hap­pens to be strik­ingly beau­ti­ful. So even if all this inform­a­tion means noth­ing to you, you really need to get your­self out and into the fyn­bos to see what we mean. Conveniently (isn’t nature

Pincushion Proteas

ever so accom­mod­at­ing?) you can see and walk in the Cape Floral Kingdom in a num­ber of areas in and around Cape Town. Going up Table Mountain? Visiting the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens? Taking a drive down to Cape Point? Take a look around you ... and wel­come to the Cape Floral Kingdom.

The full serial Heritage Site comprises:

• Table Mountain National Park
• De Hoop Nature Reserve
• The Boland moun­tain complex
• Groot Winterhoek wil­der­ness area
• The Swartberg mountains
• Boosmansbos wil­der­ness area
• Cederberg wil­der­ness area
• Baviaanskloof (which straddles the Western Cape and Eastern Cape boundary.)

Sadly about 1 700 spe­cies of fyn­bos are threatened to some extent with extinc­tion, thanks to human activ­ity such as agri­cul­tural clear­ing and the emis­sion of green­house gasses.

Tread lightly.

Useful Links
South Africa World her­it­age sites
Western Cape Attractions
Western Cape Accommodation