Travel Tips

Fynbos is proteas, ericas and members of seven plant families found nowhere else in the world. True grasses are also relatively rare. Most of the plants have small, thin leaves, typically defined as ericoid leaves. The word fynbos comes from the Dutch for fine-leaved plants. Fynbos plants include the King Protea, South Africa's national flower, the beautiful Red Disa, symbol of the Cape Province and the popular garden plants, pelargoniums, commonly known as geraniums.

It is estimated that 75 % of South Africa's rare and threatened plants are found in the fynbos.

The richness of the fynbos is well demonstrated by its ericas or heaths, of which there are over 600 different species. There are just 26 in the rest of the world.

DID YOU KNOW?
* The 470 km2 of the Cape Peninsula, including Table Mountain, is home to
2 256 different plant species - more than the whole of Great Britain, an area
5 000 times bigger! The 60 km2 of Table Mountain alone supports 1 470 species.

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 major threat to fynbos is the spread of alien plants such as hakea, the Australian wattles Acacia cyclops commonly known as rooikrans and Acacia saligna commonly known as Port Jackson, and pine trees from Europe.

Other significant threats include too frequent fires and fires in the wrong season; commercial afforestation; and the development of housing estates and farms.

Fynbos also supports large numbers of butterfly species

Fynbos cannot support herds of large mammals since the nutrient poor soils on which it grows do not provide enough nitrogen for the protein requirements of large mammals. However, smaller mammals common to fynbos are chacma baboons, klipspringers, grysbok, dassies, mongooses, and the striped mouse. Fynbos does not support high numbers of birds, but all six bird species endemic to the south-west Cape are fynbos species, e.g. the Cape sugarbird and orangebreasted sunbird. These two birds are found only in fynbos and play an important role in pollinating flowers, including those of heaths (ericas) and proteas, from which they drink nectar. Another very common sunbird frequenting the fynbos biome, is the lesser doublecollared sunbird
Although fynbos is not particularly rich in reptiles and amphibians, many of the species living there are both endemic and threatened. The very rare geometric tortoise is found in only a few surviving fynbos areas and is regarded as the world's second rarest tortoise.
The Cape has more than half of South Africa's frog species. Furthermore, of the 62 different frogs occuring here, 29 are endemic being found nowhere else on earth.