Cape Town’s Critically Endangered Cape Flats Sand Fynbos

The scientific names of rare plants tumbled out of botanist Tony Rebelo’s practiced mouth and fell on my considerably less-practiced ears. “Here’s Serruria foeniculacea,” he said, “saved from the last few plants on Earth.” He pointed at near-threatened Lampranthus reptans, blooming in the middle of the gravel path, then at critically-endangered Serruria trilopha and tongue-twisting Leucospermum hypophyllocarpodendron, both nearly wiped out on the flats of Cape Town. “And this is Serruria cyanoides. We have more individuals here than all but one of the other remaining populations.”

This incredible display of threatened plants is growing, not in a pristine nature reserve, but between a parking lot, a busy street, and a jogging path through Tokai Park in Cape Town. Until recently, this land had been a timber plantation but is now one of city’s most important conservation sites. The small section Rebelo took me through is a showpiece for restoration.

“We named it the Trail of Extinction,” explained Rebelo, who works at the South African National Biodiversity Institute. “But that wasn’t quite the right message, so we changed it to the Restoration Trail.” As we reached the end of the short path, he showed me the finale—Erica verticillata—extinct in the wild since the 1950s. It was thought lost forever, but, miraculously, horticulturalists rediscovered it growing in Vienna from stock collected in the 1700s as well as in a few South African botanical collections. 

Cape Town is the most biodiverse city on the planet. Its iconic Table Mountain National Park protects an incredible array of species surrounded by skyscrapers and residential neighborhoods. But besides its 4 million human residents, Cape Town is also home to more threatened species per square mile than any other continental land area. The city has more threatened species than all but six other countries.

This fact is poorly acknowledged by many residents and visitors. Even among those aware of the plight facing rhinos and pangolins elsewhere in South Africa, few know about the city’s immense conservation challenges. Perhaps, this is because Cape Town’s threatened species are less charismatic. Most are plants. 

“Plant blindness is a real issue,” botany PhD student Zoe Poulsen told me of the ease with which people overlook plants. “A lot of these things are rarer than the giant panda and no one’s talking much about them.” A recent study found that 37 plants have gone extinct in the Cape Town region since 1900, a tally of destruction only surpassed in the Hawaiian Islands. 

“Cape Town was just put in the wrong place,” restoration specialist Patricia Homes said, “We have four centers of endemism and incredibly high species turnover. Cape Town sits on the crown jewels of the Cape Flora.”

The Cape Floristic Region, in which the city is embedded, is the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms and home to an astonishing 9,000 vascular plant species. Seventy percent of them don’t grow anywhere else. The area is renowned for incredibly rich heathland fynbos, a term derived from the Dutch for fine-leaved bush. While Table Mountain National Park conserves montane fynbos, the plains are poorly protected in the face of rapid development and alien invasion.

The low-lying and endemic Cape Flats Sand Fynbos is a critically endangered vegetation type once the most common in the city. Urban sprawl devoured it, and just 11% remains, most of that in poor condition. A paltry 1% is conserved. Of the hundreds of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos species, 147 are threatened with extinction. Six are already gone.

Only a handful of fragments of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos remain, and Tokai Park is among the most crucial for restoration. The area is managed as part of Table Mountain National Park but has been covered in exotic pine timber plantations since the 1890s. Some of the pines accidentally caught fire in 1998. Botanists, to their astonishment, discovered critically endangered Flats Silkypuff, Diastella proteoides, among the native species that popped up from the ashes. 

Apparently, 30-year pine harvest cycles gave fynbos just enough opportunity to recharge seedbanks. As pine compartments were harvested, South African National Parks (SANParks) restored areas to Cape Flats Sand Fynbos with help from community volunteers. Restoration here is crucial, not only because the vegetation is critically endangered, but because Tokai Park is the last remnant with ecological linkages to the mountain slopes. 

In Tokai, citizen scientists helped botanists record more than 350 plant species that came back on their own. But some species weren’t represented in the seedbank and had to be replanted. These included two species already extinct in the wild. One is the Whorl Heath, Erica verticillata, which Rebelo showed me on the Restoration Trail. The other is Showy Heath, Erica turgida, the last individuals of which are said to have disappeared under a McDonalds built in Cape Town’s Kenilworth suburb. Luckily, a few plants had been rescued for botanical gardens, and the species was reintroduced to Tokai. Before they’re scratched off the extinct list, these species need to survive and reproduce in the wild for three generations. In fynbos, that means three fire cycles—around 40 years.

Despite early successes, not everyone is thrilled with the revival of fynbos. A community group called Parkscape argues to keep the exotic pines or replace them with non-invasive trees to shade park users. They also say the open understory of the pines deters crime compared to the woollier fynbos—a serious concern in violence-plagued Cape Town, especially following the horrific rape and murder of a teenage girl in the park in 2016. Parkscape successfully took SANParks to court to halt the felling of the last stands of pines. The judge ruled that SANParks hadn’t followed mandatory public participation processes to remove the pines. For now, the pines remain standing while the irreplaceable fynbos seedbank lies dormant and deteriorating.

On the northern edge of the city, conservationists are trialing a more challenging active restoration strategy for Cape Flats Sand Fynbos in Blaauwberg Nature Reserve. Unlike in Tokai, alien vegetation and livestock grazing destroyed fynbos seedbanks here, so passive restoration won’t work. Twice a week during seeding season, teams collect seed from fynbos species growing nearby. Researchers work to refine protocols to treat each species’ seeds in the lab to ensure germination. Treatments include applying chemical or physical signals like smoke, heat, or abrasion—all triggers for various species. On the land to be restored, teams clear invasives like the prevalent Australian Port Jackson, Acacia saligna, that chokes out the native fynbos. They then sow the fynbos seeds and jumpstart new growth with fire. 

On our way home from a seed collecting trip in Blaauwberg, Patricia Holmes pointed out a patch of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos clinging to existence within the cloverleaf where Cape Town’s N1 and N7 highways intersect. But for how much longer? PhD student Zoe Poulsen previously told me with exasperation, “We do fieldtrips to the N1/N7 interchange where some species are just hanging on. You think, ‘Is this it?’” 

Another important site is Rondebosch Common, an urban green space popular with walkers and runners. Sandwiched between a hospital, shops, and residential neighborhoods, it’s easily mistaken for a vacant lot ripe for development. On closer inspection, the Common bursts with floral diversity, particularly flowering bulbs. More than 200 plant species grow here. The habitat is degraded and invaded after two centuries of use as a military campground, pasture, sports field, and golf course, but it’s crucial for conservation. My November visit corresponded with the blooming of endangered Ixia monadelpha. It was sobering to think that these blue flowers dotting the Common represent the largest of just a handful of remaining populations.

At the Common, conservationists recently reintroduced the critically endangered Peacock Morea, Moraea aristata, to supplement the fewer than 50 ‘wild’ plants left in the world, which grow on the lawn of the nearby South African Astronomical Observatory. They’re also trying to reintroduce shrub species including ericas and proteas that disappeared from the Common over time. Without the shrubby overstory to provide protection from Cape Town’s powerful winds, some key pollinators can’t do their work.

The least degraded patch of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos is inside the privately owned Kenilworth Racecourse, a horseracing track built in the 1880s, inadvertently protecting the lowland fynbos inside. I met conservation manager Jerry Khalo to search for Pearl Heath, Erica margaritacea, because, until it’s restored elsewhere, Kenilworth Racecourse is the only place in the world to find it. 

“It’s not really something we should brag about,” said Khalo of the racecourse’s special plant. “It used to be much more widespread, but this is the only place left where it can live.” Critically endangered micro frogs, Microbatrachella capensis, also breed here in the pools of remnant wallows from long-gone hippos. 

Through this project supported by The Redsecker Response Fund of the International League of Conservation Photographers, I aimed to highlight species that the world risks losing without concerted conservation and restoration in Cape Town. I also sought to capture the scientists and volunteers dedicating their time and energy to create a future for endangered flora in the city. Donating just a few hours a month to remove alien species in restoration areas is an easy and practical way to help, yet the pool of volunteers is relatively small. Survival of these species also depends on public and government support in a city with competing demands for budget and space. Clearly, not everyone agrees on the need to rescue disappearing plants, especially if it means personal sacrifice. How do we navigate the trade-offs between extinction and our own desires for comfort? And as urban-dwellers, how do we blame those responsible for poaching, development, and the human-wildlife conflict threatening species around the world when we drive species to extinction in our own backyard?

Photographs and text by Morgan Trimble.

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