Natural heritage - reviving the Cape Flats’ endangered botanical biodiversity, species and landscapes

The Cape Flats is about 400 square kilometres in extent, a broad sandy strip of land with sea on either side. Many suburbs in this region are named after plant types that used to grow here.

While these plants are now largely extinct, their names memorialise the natural heritage and history of different areas of Cape Town, and the relationships people had with these species and landscapes.

Rehabilitation and replanting projects are under way to retain and restore the area’s biodiversity, along with a concerted effort by groups and institutions to reconnect communities with their natural heritage. 

Plants and places 

The Cape water lily (Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea) used to be so common in Cape Town that an entire suburb, Lotus River, was named after it. But this wetland species became extinct on the Cape Flats in the early 1900s.

Alex Lansdowne, a botanist and chair of the mayor’s advisory committee on water quality in the City of Cape Town, said the Cape water lily was frequently harvested for the colonial cut-flower trade.   

Musing on the names of Cape Town suburbs, he said: “Wittebome is named after the silver tree (Leucadendron argenteum) … that is endemic to the Cape Peninsula. Historical records show that the silver tree would have come all the day down to what is today Wynberg Main Road.”  

Lavender Hill was named after Salvia (wild sage). Olifantsbos was named after elephants, and Zeekoevlei means “hippopotamus lake”. 

Blackheath and Heathfield were named after the Erica species, Brackenfell after the bracken fern, and Protea Heights after the protea.

Lansdowne said, “Heathfield is named after Ericas, a genus that is a defining component of fynbos vegetation. Multiple species of Erica that were endemic to the Cape Flats are now extinct and there are very few remnants where one can find Ericas on the Cape Flats.” 

Planting with Steenberg community members and children at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area with BoSSIES, a project of FynbosLIFE. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

Planting indigenous plant species with community members at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

Decline of biodiversity

Rupert Koopman is a freelance botanist who used to work ​​with the Botanical Society of South Africa and at CapeNature, where he specialised in fynbos, specifically threatened species and habitats.

“Some of our threatened species that have been documented have changed their status because targeted searches have found more or less of them… In botany, you always treat things with caution due to seasonality and cryptic species. Local botanists, including me, have found things that were thought to be extinct or new localities of populations that haven’t been formally recorded before,” he said.

Of the 20 vegetation types that occur in Cape Town, 11 are critically endangered and seven occur nowhere else.  

Eddie Andrews, the deputy mayor of Cape Town and the Mayoral Committee member for spatial planning and environment, said habitat loss was the greatest driver of biodiversity loss globally and this applied to Cape Town too. 

Invasive species were also a massive threat, with climate change a significant future threat, especially in the Western Cape and fragmented landscapes such as Cape Town.

Other threats include unmanaged urbanisation, agriculture, fires, mowing, over-exploitation, pollution and environmental crime.  

Koopman said the main factors contributing to the decline of biodiversity on the Cape Flats were agriculture, suburban expansion and infrastructure development.

“I live in Boston, and if you look at my local park, they’ve got a small piece of fynbos, critically endangered Cape Flats Sand Fynbos in a corner of the park. But that remnant vegetation, which is in these small areas, has lost quite a few elements.

“Historically, people would have gone and collected anything woody for firewood, which includes proteas. So a lot of our areas that would have had proteas and other large woody shrubs don’t have them any more because of that kind of practice.”

Through rehabilitation and restoration activities by various groups and institutions, this is slowly changing and indigenous plants are being reintroduced and biodiversity restored.

A youngster from Steenberg joins in planting indigenous plant species at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area with BoSSIES, a project of FynbosLIFE. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

A youngster from Steenberg joins in planting indigenous plant species at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area with BoSSIES, a project of FynbosLIFE. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

Historical connection to biodiversity

Andrews said the Cape Flats Dune Strandveld was full of edible plants which would have sustained our ancestors. 

“The edible suurvy (sour fig) has medicinal properties and is also made into jam. The arum lily and milkwoods are just two species which grow in Strandveld. More inland, other arrays of plant species such as those in the vegetation types, Cape Flats Sand Plain Fynbos, grow in nutrient-poor acidic soils, which has resulted in further diversity,” said Andrews.

However, he said, the Cape Flats was now very urbanised and nature reserves were often the only open spaces mitigating future climate change and providing ecosystem services, including the production of water via the Cape Flats aquifer.  

Lansdowne said, “As Cape Town grows, we will lose natural environments. Our existing remnants are all we have left of what was a much more connected ecosystem on the Cape Flats. Threats include land invasion, pollution and invasive species. We need to conserve these ecological remnants on the Cape Flats for people and nature.” 

Cape Town is one of the few big cities in the Cape Floristic Region which has globally unrivalled levels of biodiversity.

“As the city has grown over the last 400 years, many species and ecosystems have become extinct. Today the unique vegetation only found on the Cape Flats is fragmented and only extant in remnants,” said Landsdowne. 

“We need to be focusing conservation efforts across socioeconomic groupings to protect our natural heritage for generations to come. Partnerships between specialists, authorities and communities are the only way we can conserve species and protect the environment into the future. 

“I strongly believe there is no point in doing conservation on the Cape Flats if we cannot get communities to be custodians of their unique biodiversity,” he said.

Community groups like the Friends of Rondebosch Common, Friends of the Liesbeek River and Friends of Zeekoevlei and Rondevlei bring people together to do conservation, instead of waiting for the state to do it. 

Highly threatened species like Moraea aristata, Erica turgida and Erica verticillata are being reestablished on the Cape Flats through community conservation efforts.

Planting indigenous plant species with community members at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

Community conservation in action

Erica turgida (the showy heath or Kenilworth heath) was only ever found on the Cape Flats between Rondebosch and Wynberg. In the 1970s, it was classified as “extinct in the wild”. 

The Friends of Rondebosch Common, together with Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and the City of Cape Town, have reintroduced this species to the Rondebosch Common. 

Erica verticillata has a similar story. Lansdowne said it became extinct due to cut flower harvesting and habitat loss but had been re-established on wetlands in Cape Town including Rondebosch Common.

In the book Historical Plant Incidence in Southern Africa, Cuthbert John Skead documents the observations — region by region — of European travellers and explorers in southern Africa in the early colonial period. 

One explorer, J Backhouse, observed Erica verticillata on the Cape Flats in 1844. He noted: “The Cape Flats are generally sandy, but beds of impure limestone occur upon them. They are thinly covered with low bushes and herbaceous plants. Various species of heath, Erica, growing upon them, some of these are very beautiful but they do not cover the country as in some parts of England; most of them are thinly scattered.” 

Another notable achievement is the reintroduction of the Rondevlei spiderhead (Serruria foeniculaceae), which was considered extinct until two seedlings were discovered in Grassy Park. From these two plants, the species has been bulked out and reintroduced into the City of Cape Town’s False Bay Nature Reserve.

Sidewalk biodiversity

One of the many community conservation efforts under way is the Biodiversity of Sidewalks in Suburban Environments (BoSSIES) project by FynbosLIFE which aims to enhance biodiversity by planting indigenous species along sidewalks. 

FynbosLIFE focuses on the restoration and rehabilitation of critically endangered vegetation types in the Cape urban area and educates people on the importance of indigenous plants in urban areas to encourage biodiversity and mitigate climate change.

Helen Mitchell runs BoSSIES. While out planting indigenous plant species with community members at the Westlake Wetland Conservation Area, she told Daily Maverick that this particular project was initiated by the Zandvlei Trust.  

“We have little flags that tell people what plants we’re putting in here. The plants we use are all local to the veld type … that we’re planting on,” said Mitchell.

Shaun Robertson, from Retreat/Steenberg, was one of the participants at the Westlake planting and brought along youngsters from his community to plant indigenous species.

“This is something we wanted to be part of because this part of our area, we want to renourish, especially with indigenous plants.

“We thought we would bring the kids on this excursion so that they can learn more about planting, and take it back to the communities they represent as well — and maybe start doing some community planting in their spaces too,” said Robertson.  

“I feel our very survival is at stake if we don’t preserve this heritage and carry on this knowledge,” said Mitchell.

“Nature is connected and interconnected. What happens to one part of it influences all other parts, and we as humans need to understand that we’re part of this very web of nature. The more we protect and encourage biodiversity, the more we’re protecting our future.” DM

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