What is Fynbos?

An introduction to one of the world’s most biodiverse mediterranean type shrublands

Winter in the Fynbos: View from the Akkadiesberg near Hermanaus looking towards the small village of Stanford. ©Zoë Chapman Poulsen.

This week’s focus is South Africa’s Fynbos: That brown-looking scratchy vegetation that clothes the mountains and lowlands of the Cape. What is it? Where can I find it and why is it important? Why should we care?

Fynbos is an evergreen, hard-leaved Mediterranean type shrubland that occurs on nutrient-poor soils derived from predominantly quartzitic sandstones and limestones.

Leucospermum hypophyllocarpodendron subsp. hypophyllocarpodendron flowering in the Fynbos in the Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park. ©Zoë Chapman Poulsen.

The name is derived from the Dutch word ‘Fijnboch’ which when literally translated means ‘fine bush’.

This vegetation type is distributed in an arc-shaped belt from the Bokkeveld Plateau near Vanrhysdorp in Namaqualand, southwards to the Cape Peninsula and eastwards to the vicinity of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape.

Protea cynaroides, more commonly known as the ‘King Protea’ is South Africa’s national flower. ©Zoë Chapman Poulsen.

Fynbos is also characterised by species from several key plant families: Restionaceae, Proteaceae, Ericaceae, Rutaceae and Iridaceae.

The Fynbos Biome is home to one of the world’s richest floras, with more than 9,000 species of plants occurring within an area the size of Malawi or Portugal.

Watsonia coccinea in bloom a few months after a fire has moved through the landscape. ©Zoë Chapman Poulsen.

Two thirds of these species are endemic to the region, thus meaning that they occur nowhere else on earth. Fynbos has 150–170 unique species per 1 000 km, making it 2–3 times more species diverse than the world’s rainforests.

South Africa’s Fynbos is considered to be one of the world’s six floral kingdoms and is the only one that occurs within a single country. The area encompassed by the Fynbos Biome is known as the Cape Floristic Region (CFR).