Page 49 - aug22_Neat

The Cape Fold Belt generally refers to the
western and southern areas of the Cape
Supergroup that have been extensively folded
into a series of longitudinal mountain ranges
and corresponding valleys, running parallel
to the south-western and southern coastlines
of South Africa, estimated to run from the
Cedarberg Mountains in the Western Cape to
Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, in the Eastern
Cape for a distance of some 850 km.
The climate across this area has been described
as Mediterranean, with hot dry summers and
cold rainy winters, although in the higher
mountain ranges temperatures can be more
extreme and snow will replace rain in the more
severe winter months.

Fynbos in a naturally occurring evergreen
sclerophyllous shrubland known for its
exceptional degree of plant biodiversity and
endemism. It is a subset of the Cape Floral
Kingdom which itself is the smallest of all 6
Floral Kingdoms in the world.

Fynbos grows in a belt 100-200km wide along
the coast of South Africa, following the Cape
Fold Belt, growing in the thin nutrient poor
soil on the mountain slopes. It is estimated to
contain over 9,000 species of the whole Cape
Floral kingdom, of which an approximate
6,000 species are endemic, occurring nowhere
else in the world, by comparison making it
richer in species diversity than any given South
American rainforest!
Cape Fynbos in the Western Cape is more
species diverse than similar Fynbos growing
in the Eastern Cape, and is estimated to
contain 1 in 5 of all recorded plant species
of the African continent as a whole, although
it only covers approximately 6% of the land
surface of the southern portion of this
remarkable continent.
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