Fynbos

Fynbos (ˈfeɪnbɒs; ˈfɛinbos fine plants) is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly coastal and mountainous, with a Mediterranean climate and rainy winters. The fynbos ecoregion is within the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. In fields related to biogeography, fynbos is known for its exceptional degree of biodiversity and endemism, consisting of about 80% (8,500 fynbos) species of the Cape floral kingdom, where nearly 6,000 of them are endemic. This land continues to face severe human-caused threats, but due to the many economic uses of the fynbos, conservation efforts are being made to help restore it. The word fynbos is often confusingly said to mean "fine bush" in Afrikaans, as bos means "bush". Typical fynbos foliage is ericoid rather than fine. The term, in its pre-Afrikaans, Dutch form, fynbosch, was recorded by Noble as being in casual use in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, John Bews referred to: "South-Western or Cape Region of Macchia or Fynbosch". He said: "In this well-known region where the rain occurs in winter and the summers are more or less dry, the dominant vegetation is of a sclerophyllous type and there is little or no natural grassland, though there are many kinds of grass..." He also refers to a high degree of endemism in the grasses in that region. Elsewhere he speaks of the term as "...applied by the inhabitants of the Cape to any sort of small woodland growth that does not include timber trees"; in the current vernacular, this still is the effective sense of the word. However, in the technical, ecological sense, the constraints are more demanding. In the latter half of the 20th century, "fynbos" gained currency as the term for the "distinctive vegetation of the southwestern Cape". Cape Floristic Region Fynbos – which grows in a 100-to-200-km-wide coastal belt stretching from Clanwilliam on the West coast to Port Elizabeth on the Southeast coast – forms part of the Cape floral kingdom, where it accounts for half of the surface area and 80% of the plant species.