h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I cultivate indigenous plants for several reasons: firstly I enjoy it immensely, because I like plants, little living things I can cherish and watch grow. I cultivate specifically indigenous plants, because in the process I learn more about our floral wealth. It is shocking to me how uninformed most people here are about our country and region’s plants. Southern Africa is a fairly well-defined floristic region. The climate here is largely cooler and drier than in the countries further to the north. It is precisely the adaptations to extreme environmental conditions which make the vegetation of Southern Africa interesting! We have the richest diversity of succulent plants of any region in the world … about 45% of all the succulent species in the whole world occur here. And the diversity is not just in terms of species. Southern Africa also has more plant families that have produced succulent members than any other region. Then there’s the Fynbos of the southwestern Cape, which is a low, shrubby vegetation that grows on very poor soils. The region gets rain mostly in the winter, with long, dry summers that the plants must survive. But in spite of this the Fynbos is the species-richest vegetation growing in any temperate region of the world … only tropical rainforests have a greater diversity of species.
Southern Africa currently has about 25 000 known land plant species. Many kinds certainly still await discovery. Unfortunately many species are also seriously threatened! Indeed, quite a few have already gone extinct. And just because we have so many, doesn’t mean we can afford it lose a bunch of them! Every species is a unique and irreplaceable link in the ecology. Every species is also a link to the past … everyone that has survived until today has an immensely long prehistory. Every one is a unique ‘solution’ to the problems of survival and reproduction in a specific place, a specific context. Everyone is a unique piece of the puzzle of life on Earth … and we still know frighteningly little about the phenomenon of life! Every species that exists, has a unique combination of genes that work … a unique set of internal and external adaptations. Plants, especially , are incredibly complex chemical factories, each species able to produce unique substances. Every species that we lose, reduces our ability to discover how plants work, how ecosystems work, how evolution works, how life itself works. But when we lose species, we don’t only lose knowledge, we also lose our fellow living beings, links that connect us as well into the total living ecology of Planet Earth, still for now the only planet which we know to be abundantly supplied with life.

By cultivating plants, I hope to stimulate awareness and interest in our region’s plants. I really feel that our country’s people should know more about our country’s plants. Most people here can easily name ten or twenty kinds of birds or mammals, but how many can name twenty of the roughly two thousands species of trees of our region? And then there are the smaller things. Many of our land’s flowering plants are exquisitely beautiful, but then we also have an awesome diversity of plants that are not so much conventionally beautiful, but weird and unique. Especially these kinds are the ones I’m interested in and focus on. And actually they are all beautiful in their own way! But it is especially the incredible diversity of forms that fascinate me. Even here in my own region, Limpopo and the other northern provinces, there are a fantastic diversity of strange plants. We may not be as wealthy as the Cape in terms of total species, but I think in the various forms of the plants found in the great diversity of different habitats, we are not so far behind! Furthermore the Cape is fairly well explored, while there are many places here up north where no botanist has yet trodden, and I am convinced there are still many funny things waiting to be discovered.

By growing plants, especially plants of our own region, I learn a lot about them. Most important is learning how to propagate them. I feel we humans can do much to propagate rare species. If we grow them in great numbers, we can plant them back into the wild and augment the natural populations. In many cases it is not at all difficult to grow and multiply our rare species, someone only has to do it.

Then one also learns a lot about plants when one sees them grow and go through the cycles of their lives in one’s own garden. One sees which insects come to pollinate the flowers, and which insects come to eat them. One sees which birds are attracted by the flowers or by the insects, or by other factors. The best is to study plants in the wild, but it’s also convenient to have plants close by to watch and study, and in this way one can learn things one would not always see in the wild. Furthermore, if one keeps plants in one’s own garden which also grow in the surrounding veldt, then one’s garden is also fairly well connected with the outlying ecology. And most important is that I feel that one is then also well-connected oneself with the wonderful wild world!

The more films I see about South Africa - like the recent 'Nature' one we saw about honey badgers - the more I appreciate the amazing diversity of your region's plant and animal life. I am in awe.

Keep up the good work - you're really performing a service, and adding to our understanding.

Hi there Dmitri! Thanks very much for this kind response. I am in awe myself ... not just of the diversity of living things in my country, just of the diversity of living things. Here on good old Earth ... but I'm sure there must be some elsewhere too!

Let's hear it for those Goldilocks planets! We'll sign up to go and survey the flora and fauna.