learning about biodiversity Our forests are

Veld & Flora FACTSHEET SOUTH AFRICAS FORESTS

islands of an ancient forest flora

Taking the gap

Forests consist of trees that form a closed canopy, with at least two layers under the canopy, namely a subcanopy (or middle storey) and forest floor (or understorey). There are two basic types of forest in the world: Needle-leaved Forests that are essentially in the Northern Hemisphere and consist mainly of evergreen conifers (gymnosperms) and Broad-leaved Forests with both evergreen and deciduous trees that are mostly angiosperms. South Africas forests are Broad-leaved Forests that consist of Afrotemperate or Afromontane forests, with some tropical forest in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The Forest Biome is our smallest biome and less than 5 percent of South Africa is covered in natural forest. (See article by Eugene Moll on p.174.)

Switching biomes: a burning question

It is easier for a fynbos plant to take root and flourish in Australia than it is for it to take root in the forest maybe a metre away from it. The two vegetation types have a completely different structure, composition and function yet they are actually alternative states. Over the past ten to twenty thousand years in South Africa, natural forests, woodland, grassland and fynbos have occurred in mosaics, with forests expanding during wetter, and shrinking during drier periods. These mosaics of forest and fynbos or forest and grassland exist because of fire. Forests flourish in the absence of fire. Grassland, like fynbos, needs fire to flourish, using fire as a way to make inroads on forests and thereby conquer new territory. Fires require a continuous supply of grass or fynbos fuel to spread; and forests shade out fynbos plants and grasses and prevent them from taking root. Fire almost never penetrates the depths of a forest, unless conditions are exceptional. Thus they are locked into a battle for survival and it seems that in todays warmer, high CO2 conditions, the forests have the edge as there has been a general increase in scrub invasion of grassland and woody invasion of fynbos. We need to understand the dynamics of grass-forest boundaries to be able to predict where biome shifts or biome switches, with the accompanying consequences to biodiversity and ecosystem services, might happen. Most of our grassland and fynbos occurs in areas that could support forest, and ecologists still puzzle over the reason for this, although it is generally agreed that the different ways in which they regenerate under changing circumstances is crucial. There have been several good articles in Veld & Flora on this topic. (See box below). The photo on the right shows a fynbos-forest edge near Stanford after a fire reclaimed some land for fynbos that had been invaded by forest in the absence of fire.

About 65 million years ago forests covered most of the subcontinent of Africa. Since then there has been a general trend towards a cooler and drier climate. Around 14 million years ago, with the Antarctic ice sheet in place, there was a major change in the environment of the entire Southern Hemisphere as the proto-Benguela ocean current brought cold water to the west coast of Africa, heralding a drier, cooler period in southern Africa. By the end of the Miocene (about 5.3 million years ago) there was very little rainforest left, and the more drought-resilient vegetation that makes up the majority of our biomes today, became dominant. Look up Velvet worms and prehistoric plantlife by Dane McDonald, in Veld & Flora 97(1), 30-31, March 2011. Forests occur in patches where rainfall is high, and where fire cannot reach them; their seeds dispersed over distance by migrating birds. Our largest remnant of this ancient forest lies along the southern Cape coastal shelf and adjacent mountain slopes in a swathe 200 km long from George to Humansdorp. These forests contain over 500 plant species, like the White Pear (Apodytes dimidiata) shown on the left, comparable with similar forests to the north but modest when compared with the richness of the surrounding fynbos. Look up Our surprising forests by Richard Cowling in Veld & Flora 94(2), 48-49, June 2002. We refer to our forests as Afrotemperate as there are many

similarities between our forests and the montane forest floras in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Look up Amongst Africas giants by Christopher Wills in Veld & Flora 86(4), 162-167, December 2000.

South Africas fascinating

forests
A

community on different levels

South Africas forests constitute our smallest and most fragmented biome, but they loom large in importance in many ways, from providing ecosystem services to recreation. Our largest and best know forests are the southern Cape Afrotemperate forests of Knysna and Tsitsikamma. Indigenous forests extend from the Cape Peninsula eastwards through the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma Mountains of the southern Cape, with a discontinuous distribution through the midlands of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Northwards, forests are distributed along the Drakensberg Mountains of KwaZulu-Natal (shown in the photo to the left), the eastern Free State, Mpumalanga and into Limpopo, where the northernmost forests are located in the Soutpansberg Mountains. The temperate inland forests are generally small, patchy in distribution and usually located on the south to south-eastern aspect of mountain ranges. Lowland forests of a more tropical type extend along the coast from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape through KwaZulu-Natal to Mozambique. Indeed these Maputaland-Pondoland forests encompass most of our forest biodiversity and the majority of threatened forest types. Forests typically occur in the moist areas of the country, but specialized forest types are also found fringing rivers or within protected kloofs. Look up Platbos: A unique forest near the southern tip of Africa by Eugene Moll, Veld & Flora 94(2), 80-81, June 2008; Ngome Forest by Priscilla Swartz, Veld & Flora 86(2), 69, June 2000 and Maputalands Licuati Forest and Thicket by Samira Izidine, Stefan Sieber and Braam van Wyk in Veld & Flora 89(2), 56-61, June 2003. There may even be evidence to suggest a further type of forest to add to the list the kelp forests of our coastline. Read Kelp Forests: Forests of a different kind by Gavin W. Maneveldt on page 168 of this issue.

carbon sink

Read more
Discover more about South Africas forests in these articles in back issues of Veld & Flora.
172 VELD&FLORA | DECEMBER 2011

Why do grasslands have no trees? by Julia Wakeling in Veld & Flora 96(1), 24-25, March 2010; The long walk to treedom by Glen Moncrieff in Veld & Flora 96(1), 22-23, March 2010; Firestorms in savanna and forest ecosystems: Curse or cure? by Catherine Browne and William Bond in Veld & Flora 97(2), 62-63,

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is necessary for plants to photosynthesize and it is one of the greenhouse gases that causes heat to be retained on the planet, making it the pleasant place it is for humans and present life forms. There are two forms of carbon on Earth ancient carbon locked up in fossil form or deep in the Earths crust or in the ocean and new carbon which was recently part of a living thing and which cycles regularly into the atmosphere and back into life all the time. By burning fossil fuel (for transport, industry and agriculture) we are releasing ancient carbon into the atmosphere, which is heating up so rapidly that scientists fear that conditions on Earth for humans will soon be unbearable. We are trying to find ways to balance the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere by removing some of it and storing it away again. As plants grow they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in their leaves, stems and roots. Thus plants are carbon sinks. (A carbon sink absorbs more carbon that it releases.) However, when plants die and decompose, the carbon is cycled back into the air, unless it is very cold and decomposition is slowed down. Indigenous forests and most natural vegetation are fairly effective, if short-term carbon sinks. Read the article Investing in sustainability on p.153 of this issue. But it is a fallacy that we can just plant a tree and hope that this will offset the fossil fuel that we are burning. Look up The death of common sense: Why planting trees is not going to help climate change one bit by Mark Botha Veld & Flora 95(1), 4-5, March 2009.

Forests have several different vegetation levels or strata. As sunlight is essential for photosynthesis, the plants of the forest evolve to exploit light of varying intensity at successive vertical levels. The top layer, or canopy, comprises the tallest trees that use about half the available sunlight. The trees put most of their energy into growing woody stems, which enables them to reach up to this resource. The middle storey or subcanopy contains smaller trees and saplings of large trees, waiting to take any gap that occurs in the canopy for example the death of an old tree and allows the energy-giving sunlight through. Until then, they are limited by the lack of light to reach their full potential. Climbers germinate in the shade, yet twine or climb their way up to the canopy, using tendrils and other means to take advantage of the trunks of the tall trees. Lianas or woody climbers are characteristic of forests, and can get so heavy that they can topple trees during storms. Epiphytes, such as ferns and orchids, use trees as a base on which to grow in order to gain access to the sunlight. Lichens, those algae-fungi mutualistic partnerships, also grow in the tree branches. The bottom layer, or forest floor, is made up of seedlings, ferns and fungi and a host of organisms that live in the leaf litter and soil. A forest has horizontal levels too an edge or forest margin of small bushes and shrubs, a pioneer or fire zone of fast-growing shrubs and trees that need to grow quickly in order to establish themselves before the next fire occurs in the surrounding grassland or fynbos, and the climax forest of established, long-lived trees. Many animals, like the young Spotted Eagle Owl eating a mouse caught on the forest floor (opposite), exploit the various levels. Isolated from each other for thousands of years, our patchy forests exhibit very high animal biodiversity, for example, the many different species of Velvet Worms or Peripatus, an animal of the forest floor.

June 2011 and Misunderstood: Our grasslands are ancient stable features by Nicholas Zaloumis in Veld & Flora 97(2), 68-70, June 2011. Photographs on this page by Eugene Moll, Alice Notten and Caroline Voget. Information from Sally Argent,

William Bond, Jeanette Loedolff, John Manning, Eugene Moll, Theodor C. Stehle and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (http:// www.daff.gov.za/). Download the factsheet from http://www.botanicalsociety.org.za and articles and references from http://LABpages.blogspot.com.
DECEMBER 2011 | VELD&FLORA 173