African Wildlife & Environment Issue 79

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Grootbos Afromontane forest margin heavily fire-damaged.

forest species like Afrocarpus falcatus , Ocotea bullata and Olea capensis subsp. macrocarpa , Kiggelaria africana another pioneer species and often outside of forest as is Olea europaea subsp. africana and Apodytes dimidiata . Another common tree in Platbos is Euclea racemosa that for me is a Strandveld endemic, along with Olea exasperata ! Looking through the list of shrubs at Platbos they are all forest marginal or rocky outcrop species. Francois further suggests that if there was no fire in the Cape Mountain Fynbos Heathlands that forests of Widdringtonia nodiflora, Maytenus oleoides, Heeria argentia, Olea capensis subsp. capensis and others would thrive. My counter to this is that where these species thrive on rocky outcrops such as at Bains Kloof, our data show the soils in these outcrops have ten-fold more P and N than the adjacent heathland soils and the run-off water makes these sites much wetter. Again, emphasising the plant-available, yet unseen and mostly unmeasured component.

kloofs where nutrients can also accumulate, on the upper shale-band in the Table Mountain quartzites (Boesmansbos), or on the quartzite boulder-strewn granite slopes above Newlands and Kirstenbosch. These are our Afromontane Forests (following White’s Vegetation of Africa nomenclature). There are no Dune Forests in the CFR (they only occur further north and east), but we do have one tiny unique patch of forest in the CFR and that is at Platbos near Stanford. I have engaged with Francois Krige about the status and classification of this amazing tiny patch. He has contended that the floristic composition has many Afromontane Forest elements, but my rebuttal to that is that those Afromontane species that do occur are generalists. Common trees at Platbos are Sideroxylon (not a forest species anywhere else I am aware of), Celtis africana a widespread generalist in forest, and even a stand-alone on mountainsides, Olinia ventosa that essentially is a forest pioneer rather than a mature

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