Apart from “Are we nearly there yet”, the most common question I am asked while hiking in these Cape mountains is: “What actually is fynbos?”
It’s a good question. Is it a bush? Or lots of them? And why does such apparently insignificant-looking vegetation elicit such shiny-eyed excitement in otherwise quite normal people – your writer included. Oh, and since we’re on the subject, what’s all this about fire?
Time to sort it all out: here are my Top Five Questions about fynbos.
1) What is fynbos?
The name originates from an Old Dutch word: ‘fine bush’. It refers not to one but to all the plants associated with the mountains of South Africa’s Cape region. It’s like saying ‘tropical forest’ or ‘savannah’ – a vegetation type in other words. These mountains – made of ancient, weather-beaten sandstone – extend from the Western Cape’s Cederberg range a 3-hour drive north of Cape Town to the mountains of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, a 2-day drive away.
What it is all based on: ancient, quartzitic sandstones that were the bottom of the sea 400 million years ago.
Crumpled by continental collisions, the fynbos-covered Cape Fold Mountains are often dramatically steep & amazingly scenic.
Fynbos appears unimpressive from a distance. It is treeless, scrubby and brown – ‘fine bush’ in the sense of thin, straggly and not very productive. It is a heathland – resembling similar environments in Europe, Australia and South America growing in nutrient-deficient soil under tough climatic conditions. Fine bush indeed, but on closer inspection fynbos reveals itself to be a mesmerising mosaic of plants bursting with flowers every month of the year. Proteas are the most famous plants in fynbos but it’s the restios – the Cape Reeds – that define its presence. Other familiar names found in fynbos are heathers, irises, daisies and orchids as well as members of the citrus, pea and carrot families.
Found throughout the fynbos region, the well-known King Protea is South Africa’s national flower.
The heathers are present in huge numbers in fynbos, adapting to localised conditions to create hundreds of different species.
Replacing grasses, the Cape Reeds – Restios – are a key indicator of the presence of fynbos. The more you see of them, the tougher the environment.
2) What makes it so special?
Fynbos is the most studied vegetation type outside of Europe. Generations of scientists – including Charles Darwin – have been left open-mouthed in amazement at the stuff – and it’s not necessarily because it is so beguilingly beautiful.
The Blue Disa is one of the many orchid species in fynbos – indeed, a quarter of orchids in southern Africa are found on the Cape Peninsula.
You find the bizarre as well as the beautiful in fynbos – the Candelabra Lily, only emerging for a few short weeks at the end of summer.
Two biological juggernauts collide in fynbos. Firstly, there is a stupendous number of plants species present. Europe, for example, has 20 different types of heather; the fynbos – covering an area the size of Portugal – has 652. And secondly, so many fynbos plants – around 70% – are completely unique to the region. Free from major catastrophe (an Ice Age for example) for millions of years, fynbos plants have had the time to adapt to every twist and turn of the mountains, thriving in micro-environments separated only by a few metres of altitude or millimetres of rain. The net result is the world’s most diverse plant habitat – even more than tropical rainforests. There are far more plant species on the 70 kilometre-long Cape Peninsula, for instance, than in the whole of the British Isles; drive to the mountains 45 minutes away and you have a similar number of plants but half of them are different.
3) What’s the role of fire?
Fire reduces most of the fynbos to ash – these are the Silvermine mountains near Cape Town in March 2015 after a monstrous fire.
Simple: no fire, no fynbos. Every bit of fynbos you can see today has been repeatedly burned to the ground over tens of thousands of years. It covers the mountains because of fire. How so? Go back in time four or five million years and the Cape landscape was covered in thick, dripping forest. Two million years ago the climate dried up and fire was introduced to these hot, windy mountains. In the face of flames, trees retreated to fireproof ravines such as Table Mountain’s Skeleton Gorge. In their place came fynbos plants, many of which had been biding their time since the dinosaurs and were quick to adapt to the new regime: fire, wind, sun, few nutrients and little water.
Consequently, fynbos plants now require fire to complete their life cycle: the flames burn accumulated dead plant material to recycle nutrients back into the impoverished soil; the intense heat opens tightly-sealed seed-cones and triggers underground bulbs into growth. It gets more complex: the chemicals in fire such as ammonia act as stimulants for many protea species to burst into leaf from their blackened stump. It happens quickly too: within a week there are green shoots emerging from the charred sand. After a few months, the landscape is awash with colour as thousands of flowering plants take advantage of the new conditions, ironically making a post-fire environment the best time to see fynbos.
Within five days of the fire the fynbos has begun its recovery: here, Watsonias (a type of iris) push skywards from their underground bulbs.
This Restio simply re-sprouts from its charred but fire-resistant stump, a tactic used by many fynbos plants.
4) Is it under threat?
Alien pine trees suffocate fynbos, destroy bio-diversity, soak up precious water & increase the fire risk.
Yes, but perhaps not in a way that you might think. Fynbos will handle climate change in some form – probably as more succulent-dominated – and most of it is not in danger of being turned into car parks or shopping malls because fynbos usually grows on steep windy mountains swept by fire.
But what fynbos can’t handle are alien trees. Mediterranean pines, Australian eucalypts and acacias – trees that thrive in similar environments – overwhelm fynbos and turn flower meadows into dark, silent forests. Their march is relentless, their wind-dispersed seeds taking them into inaccessible ravines and watercourses, strangling the mountain ecology.
Fynbos is also endangered in many places due to an erratic fire regime. Although fynbos plants need fire, many of them take 15 years or so to build up their seed again. Therefore, the frequency of fires is crucial, and these days it is often the case that some areas burn too frequently (the lower slopes of Table Mountain) or not enough (ironically, the more remote parts of Table Mountain). And if the fynbos is infested with alien trees, fires become too hot, incinerating rather than stimulating. Witness the recent damage to the Garden Route town of Knysna where alien trees carried the mountain fire down into the urban area.
5) Why should we conserve it?
Mountain water on its way to becoming Cape Town’s drinking water; save fynbos & we keep the taps running.
There are many reasons to conserve fynbos. In the big picture, it guarantees the bio-diversity of these mountains and in turn provides us with a healthy, accessible natural environment. There are jobs and educational experiences in fynbos as well as recreation, tourism and research opportunities but the greatest reason to conserve fynbos at the present time is the need to keep water flowing out of Cape Town’s taps.
Fynbos-covered mountains are responsible for delivering one glass of water in five in South Africa. Some of the wettest places in the country are wild, soggy mountain tops covered in rare proteas. Fynbos allows up to 80% of the rainwater to run off and fill our rivers and reservoirs. Cover the mountains with pines and blue gums and you can say goodbye to up to 70% of the rain that falls on them. With Cape Town and much of the Western Cape currently gripped by a water crisis, it is as important to get rid of alien trees and preserve fynbos as it is to pack away your hosepipe and get a rainwater tank.
Hi Fynbosguy
I am a tour guide and have often wondered what the driving forces are behind the evolution of fynbos and why it had not occurred elsewhere.
I think you pretty much answered this when you explained that the climate dried around 2 million years ago and this combined with fire contributed to the evolution.
I have heard that our soil types have an influence to? Is this accurate ? It seems so strange that it is only here when places like Tasmania feel very similar climatically yet fynbos is not found there. I always tell my guests that it’s perhaps our soil types that are particularly unique ? After all there must be dry, windy, fire racked areas elsewhere on earth but still no fynbos!
I guess it just goes to show how utterly random the plant mutations are and that they simply did not occur in other parts of the planet.
Would it be accurate to say that fynbos has only existed for 2 million years?
Hi James
Thank you for your interesting questions – it would be accurate to say that fynbos has existed for around 4 to 2 million years as a distinct biome though some of its families – proteas for example – go back to the time of the dinosaurs. I like to think of fynbos plants patiently waiting at the edge of the vast forests and on mountain tops for millions of years, waiting for the forests to recede (as they did in the face of climate change) and then taking over the mountains as they adapted to the new regime of fire and wind and drought.
Fynbos-type vegetation – “heathlands” – in fact occur all over the world and I bet in Tasmania too. The plants on the SW coast of Australia looks much like fynbos and indeed contain proteas. The ultimate driver behind heathlands is poor soil (not necessarily climate) and although fynbos soils are notoriously poor in minerals (eg nitrates and phosphates), the complex mix of soil types – some sandy, some with clay, some with granite, some with mulch, some wet, some dry (you get the point) – means lots of micro-habitats, even if they are ones with slim pickings. Different conditions then create different species as you know.
The forces that shaped fynbos vegetation have also shaped the heath plants of the Scottish moors and the Californian chaparral – poor soil, periodic drought/floods, wind, high evaporation rates – and we can see that in their needle-like leaves, small size and so on. But why fynbos is so ridiculously diverse is because it has had the last 2 million years to evolve to every nook and cranny of the mountains while the moorlands of Europe lay under hundreds of feet of killing ice – glaciers. The northern hemisphere flora has – basically – had to start again after the last Ice Age. The Cape has been ice-free all this time.
You know that smell, the smell of the ‘fynbos’ when you finally arrive at the cape and feel instantly relaxed.
Which plant gives off that strong smell? The reason for narrowing it down to a single or couple of plants is that occasionally I smell the smell of fynbos in Australia in random spots.
That smell brings back wonderful childhood memories so I’d like to plant some in my garden on the beach in northern nsw Australia.
Obviously I need to be able to find the plant in Australia but how do you find it if you don’t have a name or two?
Hi Kate
Yes, fynbos has a most characteristic smell & the main culprits are usually the buchus, members of the Citrus family & long used to make medicinal teas. The Salvias (Sage family) are also strongly scented as are many of the heathers – the honey heaths in particular – & that’s before we get to specialist smells: the outrageous night-time scent of Gnidias (young-lady-who-gads-about-by-night is how it translates from Afrikaans) or the crazy boerwors smell of the Small Brown Afrikaaner Gladiolus. And as for your garden Down Under, I reckon you can get a few things on the go: some fynbos plants have become garden plants all over the world – see if you can get a Coleonema album (a buchu) and a Salvia (S africana lutea is a good one) as they should do okay there & then a whole load of geraniums/pelargoniums – they are usually from the fynbos. These should be pretty easy to get – I should think! They’d all do well in sandy soil near the beach for sure. Let me know if it works!
The honey from Fynbos is amazing!! I feel it rivals the famed Manuka honey.
Is there any truth in the seeing that fynbos (are abele to/can)ignite itself in strong winds and that is a factor in igniting these veldfires?
Interesting question Jan – one that I have thought about for a while but still have no definitive answer. Before humans came along and started fires all the time – accidentally or not – fires in fynbos were caused by very occasional freak events – the rare lightning strike we have in the Cape; sparks coming from a tumbling rock dislodged by a baboon; and … self-ignition/spontaneous combustion? Certainly there is an enormous build up of mulch and dry plant material in very old fynbos – and you know how warm a compost pile can get. But no-one has done the science as far as I know – a Phd in waiting perhaps – but what I can tell you which is interesting is that when scientists try to recreate the instant flare up from a tossed cigarette on Table Mt road in windy Feb, they can’t! They have all the ingredients there inside – wind, dry material, spark, dry air … but I heard them saying how very difficult it was in laboratory conditions to get that sudden whoosh of fynbos going up. The never-ending enigma of fynbos! Thanks for the question.
Hi Dominic,
I would recommend looking up William Bond’s work for information related to the influence of fire in the CFR 🙂
Thank you Jessica, I have heard of the name before and I’ve just googled him and – wow – he’s the Fire Guy! I will take a look at his work – great tip, thanks.
Fire is important for the assistance of Germination of the seeds of the Fynbos
Indeed, the bottom line is that without fire, there would be no fynbos. I was in Orange Kloof last week and the fynbos there is reverting back to forest because fire has been excluded from the kloof for so long.
Hey fynbosguy
I wanted to ask to what is the fynbos that is found in the world called?
Hi Babalwa – do you mean what other types of fynbos vegetation are found across the world? If so, there are several, all ‘heathlands’ which mean, basically, a collection of bushes, shrubs, reeds, tough grasses on a nutrient-poor environment, usually sandstone and – as far as I know – all with fire built into their life cycle. The stuff in California is called chaparral while in the UK they talk about heaths and moors. SW Australia has a fynbos-looking biome called kwongan. Hope that helps!
Hi,
I am curious to know if there any fynbos species that is more like a tree and less like a shrub. Something that is tall? I have a little cottage and would love to plant some trees but need them to be in sync with the du on environment. I don’t want to introduce a anything threatening or foreign.
Hi Zee – tricky one – not many true trees in fynbos. Proteas can get tall but hard to grow big ones quickly; the mountain cypress is the only true tree in fynbos – don’t know if it is available in nurseries – but Rhus species grow fast and big, and although they are a shrub, you may be able to shape them upwards? If you go for a Protea, get a leucadendron – they seem to grow taller rather than sprawling.
Thank you for this amazing article. I really learned so much
And thank you for reading it!
Hello & thank you for your interesting question but I must first apologise by having to reply in English. But – if I can believe Google Translate – you’d like to know how fynbos plants survive such challenging environmental conditions. Well, there are books on the stuff, but here are some of the more obvious & easily seen ones but the most important thing to remember is that all fynbos plants have one big design feature in mind: Save Water
1) Many (most?) fynbos plants have tiny, needle-like leaves (the ‘fine’ in fynbos – fine bush) with the stomata hidden underneath. They are also waxy & very tough
2) Many other plants are succulents – and why not? South Africa has 47% of the world’s succulent plants – keeping water locked in leaves or roots etc
3) And other plants are geophytes – staying underground & emerging after rain/fire (prime conditions) – orchids, irises, hyacinths etc
4) Fynbos is evergreen – no need to shed & replace leaves each year
5) Life cycles of plants are built around the fire regime – use it or lose it; they use fire as the re-start of their life cycle
6) Fynbos takes full advantage of the May to October rainy season (they call it ‘winter’ over here for some reason but it’s the main growing season in fynbos); plants send out tiny roots close to the surface of the soil to absorb as much water & nutrients as possible – proteas & restios especially
7) Many plants don’t have leaves – the reed-like restios, some of the irises
8) There are several carnivorous plants in fynbos – the sundews (Drosera) are very common & extract nutrients from trapped insects
9) Many plants have soft, grey hair on their leaves to add extra sun protection (used by humans to light fires)
10) Mycorrhizal association is common, especially with ericas – it’s a root & soil fungus relationship, exchanging minerals for carbohydrates; it’s a tactic also used in a different way by some proteas which produce nectar from ‘teeth’ on their leaves for ants to drink & so protect the shrub from potential predation.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question – thank you for your interest.