African Wildlife & Environment Issue 79

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Standing under one of the large Sideroxylon trees in Platbos.

nutrients had accumulated, that today are covered in what Acocks called Strandveld (today also known as Sub-tropical Thicket, a name I argue is incorrectly applied phytogeographically). Today where forest patches occur on our mountains, they are confined to fire-shadow

So where exactly, in my view, were those extensive forests that 'covered the CFR' in eons gone by? For me, our mountain chains were NEVER completely, or even almost completely, forested. Our mountains have been covered by Cape Fynbos Heathlands for before the great forest age. I have two supporting reasons for this: ONE: our heathlands are much more species rich than our forest by orders of magnitude, which attests to their much greater age (analogous to the recently accepted fact that our grasslands are much older than the forest patches scattered through them. Sadly, Acocks was wrong in thinking grasslands have colonised old, forested areas so are younger or 'derived'). TWO: forests, even today, do not survive, or even thrive, on the heathland soils of the mountains because there are quite simply not enough plant- available nutrients to support forest species. Thus, when there were extensive forests in the CFR, they would have been along the foothills of the quartzite mountains on the granite and shale soils, and possibly in localised small sandy areas where additional

Under a Sideroxylon monospecific grove where there is no undergrowth.

20 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 79 (2021)