Fynbos

This lovely fynbos grows in abundance close to where I live. I do not know the exact name of it.

It is said:

"The CapeFynbos is a wonder of the world. It is the term given to a collection of plants (a vegetation type) that are mainly shrubs and is comprised of species belonging to South Africa's southwestern and southern Cape. Fynbos makes up four-fifths of the Cape Floral Kingdom, which covers an area of less than 90 000 square kilometres (the size of Malawi or Portugal) and hosts 8 600 plant species. To put this in perspective, the British Isles, three and a half times larger, have only 1 500 plants and less than 20 of those are endemic. Table Mountain alone has almost 1 500 species in 57 square kilometres.

So special is the Cape Floral Kingdom that it has been designated as one of the earth's six plant kingdoms, alongside for instance, the Boreal Forest Kingdom. It is the smallest Floral Kingdom in the world and in quite a league of its own. The Cape Floral Kingdom contains 526 of the world's 740 erica species, 96 out of the world's 160 gladiolus species and 69 proteas out of 112 on earth.

The Fynbos Biome bears a certain resemblance to the vegetation in other Mediterranean or winter rainfall regions in so far as it has had to adapt to wet winters and dry summers.

In the Mediterranean countries this vegetation is called "macchia". The fynbos in South Africa differs from the vegetation of the other areas in that it resembles that of both the southern and northern Mediterranean areas and comprises a much larger diversity of species."

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