Ninety years passed before Pearson’s vision of a well-equipped research facility at Kirstenbosch was realised in the Kirstenbosch Research Centre.
Understanding the workings of nature
‘Research is, or should be, undertaken with the single objective of discovering truth, regardless of the consequence. These, however, may at any time assume a practical and economic importance which no one has been less inclined to expect than the investigator himself.’
HAROLD H.W. PEARSON
South African Journal of Science, 1910
Joseph Mathews, at right, and Alec Middlemost, Assistant Curator, admire the pond in the main lawn. Mathews published numerous articles on his horticultural research into growing indigenous plants, which, with taxonomic studies led by Compton, dominated the research programme at Kirstenbosch for its first seven decades.
For the first 60-plus years of Kirstenbosch’s history, research was a poor cousin to the main focus of the Garden – indigenous plant horticulture. The Garden’s first Director, Harold Pearson, was an internationally respected scientist who dedicated his energies to the establishment of Kirstenbosch as well as practising as a full-time professor; and Robert Compton, who succeeded Pearson as Director, developed the herbarium that was to carry his name and contribute so much to our knowledge of the Cape flora. The energies of Brian Rycroft, Compton’s successor, were largely channelled into expanding the network of National Botanical Gardens across the country. When Kobus Eloff was appointed to succeed Rycroft, the research team at Kirstenbosch numbered just two taxonomists. Eloff was successful in attracting external funding, and with it a team of young scientists – several of these making major contributions to developing the science programme.
But the first real change arrived in 1990, when the research strategy for the new NBI changed course from an essentially inward focus of documenting the flora of the Cape and the threats to its plant species, to addressing the emerging needs and opportunities of a rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape.
In spite of the decades of political and academic isolation, trade embargoes and social ostracism to which apartheid South Africa was exposed, international scientific cooperation continued through collegial avenues, just as it had across Europe during the Napoleonic wars, across South Africa through the South African war, and across the world during the Cold War. In the 1970s and 1980s, South African ecologists played an active role in the developing fields of fire ecology, invasive species biology, landscape change and the management of threatened habitats and endangered plants. This exposure to emerging trends in ecology and conservation led to the newly established NBI adopting a much broader sense of opportunity than previously thought important or even appropriate to the research programmes of a botanical institute. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, introduced new global agendas in environmental policy, management and research, with new focuses on topics such as desertification, climate change and biodiversity.
Emerging from the rapidly developing international environmental consciousness of the late 20th century was the realisation that many environmental problems were soluble only through collaborative multidisciplinary research. During the years of relative isolation, South Africa had initiated many programmes to address complex environmental problems, based on the philosophy of cooperative science that embraced the efforts of universities, government agencies and the private sector. Without any dedicated budgets or specially appointed staff for these themes, from its inception in 1990, NBI tracked down funds, inspired young researchers, and developed partnerships with like-minded individuals and institutions both nationally and internationally. The new focus on collaborative research was aligned to the needs of the new, post-apartheid government.
One of the first reports emerging from the Kirstenbosch Research Centre, written by Timm Hoffman and Ally Ashwell, was Nature Divided: Land Degradation in South Africa.
An early project that opened new approaches to old problems was the land transformation research led by Timm Hoffman of the Kirstenbosch Research Centre (KRC). He challenged both the prevailing political system and scientific dogma in the ground-breaking book Nature Divided – Land Degradation in South Africa. Written with Ally Ashwell, and published by UCT Press in 2001, the book synthesised Hoffman’s research on landscape change in South Africa, providing an update on the trend that Sparrman, Thunberg and Burchell had first pointed out some 200 years earlier, when they noted the impacts of overgrazing in the Karoo. Nature Divided remains a benchmark on the topic.
The possible impacts of climate change on South Africa’s biodiversity have been a key field of study by Kirstenbosch Research Centre researchers.
Climate change had appeared on the global science agenda during the mid-1980s, but it had been regarded as little more than a passing big science fad by some of the country’s leading scientists. Fortunately, the science programme at Kirstenbosch was not constrained by the power brokers of the government’s key agencies or even by the entrenched academic community. NBI’s Guy Midgley and his colleagues, now established in the newly built Kirstenbosch Research Centre, were encouraged to explore, predict and explain the impacts of potential climate change on the vegetation and flora of southern Africa. The climate-change work at the KRC is one of SANBI’s flagship programmes, and enjoys wide international recognition.
Aloe dichotoma grows in the Nieuwoudtville Kokerboom Forest. This southernmost population of Kokerbooms is stable, but those to the north, in Namibia, are suffering from increasing rates of dieback, possibly linked to a warming climate.
One of the most quoted papers emerging from the Kirstenbosch Research Centre is the study by Wendy Foden and colleagues on the distribution and dynamics of the iconic Quiver tree – Aloe dichotoma. Discovered and named by that indefatigable plant collector from Kew, Francis Masson, while exploring the rugged Bokkeveld in the company of Carl Peter Thunberg in 1774, Aloe dichotoma is found across 11 degrees of latitude (between 32 and 21 degrees south) from the arid Northern Cape through to central Namibia. Foden found that the recent dieback in Quiver trees was most pronounced in the northern populations, while southern populations were healthy. She correlated the patterns of dieback with observed and modelled climate changes in the latter half of the 20th century, and also with known temperature and aridity tolerances of the species. She concluded that the geographical range of Aloe dichotoma is being progressively squeezed between dieback in the north, and the slow rate, or even absence, of expansion to the south. Her findings challenged the popular belief that populations of plants will simply migrate polewards (towards cooler climates) during global-warming events. Her work furthermore suggests that desert floras, once thought to be relatively immune to climate change, will likely become more species-poor with increased global warming.
An equally important research project at the KRC, undertaken by one of Guy Midgley’s Ph.D. students, Barney Kgope, and co-supervised by UCT ecologist William Bond, was on the responses of savanna trees to increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is well documented and shows a 25 per cent increase over the past 50 years, forming the basis of suggestions that the globe is facing a seriously accelerated warming event. What Kgope found is intriguing, and of key importance for stock farming and wildlife tourism in the savanna regions of Africa and other intertropical areas (see The fate of Africa’s savannas).
Ph.D. student Barney Kgope undertakes field measurement of carbon dioxide uptake during photosynthesis.
Studies on the responses of savanna trees to increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide suggest that major changes in the ratios of woody plant to grass in savanna ecosystems could occur in the future.
The grasses of African savannas photosynthesise following what is called the C4 process, which is more water efficient than the more common photosynthesis pathway, called C3, used by temperate grasses, shrubs and trees. Growth rates of C4 plants are only marginally influenced by the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Trees and shrubs following the C3 process, however, are positively enhanced by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. Using specially designed growth chambers, Kgope was able to demonstrate a marked increase in growth rate, both of shoots and roots, of savanna trees exposed to the levels of carbon dioxide expected within the next 50 years, if current trends of fossil-fuel use continue. In African savannas, the balance between grasses and trees is maintained by fire. Fires of normal frequency and heat are sufficient to kill most young trees at the sapling stage, resulting in the mosaic of trees and grassy areas typical of the African savanna. But, if saplings grow just a little faster, they can emerge above the kill-zone of fires and grow to maturity – forming a closed woodland, or worse, a dense thicket. Once a tree or shrub canopy is established, the C4 grasses will not receive enough sunlight, their biomass will gradually decrease, fuel loads will reduce and fires will become less frequent. What was originally a productive savanna, providing a mix of grazing and browsing for cattle or wildlife populations, will transform into an unproductive thicket, with serious socioeconomic consequences.
‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’ This somewhat cynical quote is attributed to Albert Einstein (1879–1955). The reality is that predictive ecology demands accurate information on the abundance and distribution of animals and plants. Much of this information on African ecosystems was laid down during two centuries of botanical collecting that preceded modern ecosystem studies. What accelerated our understanding of climate/biodiversity dynamics in South Africa was the establishment of several atlassing projects – a compendium of georeferenced information, where the exact geographic location of the record can be fixed to an accuracy of a few metres through the use of satellite-based geographic positioning systems, or through the use of fine-scale maps. In the case of birds, South Africa has one of the finest information systems available anywhere, based on bird sightings collected by thousands of volunteers over the past 30 years. More recently, other networks have been established, making use of the power of mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet to rapidly document information on butterflies, reptiles, frogs and spiders. Many of these are now incorporated and funded through the wider science network of SANBI.
Examples of the floral diversity in the family Proteaceae: TOP Leucadendron tinctum and ABOVE Mimetes argenteus
TOP Protea cynaroides and ABOVE Leucospermum erubescens
The Protea Atlas Project has been a Kirstenbosch initiative since its inception in September 1990. With a small in-house team, but with hundreds of volunteer field workers, Tony Rebelo has amassed what is probably the biggest, most accurate, geo-referenced database of information on the distribution and abundance of any single family of plants, anywhere. This unique database, linked as it is to detailed environmental information on climate, soils, altitude, slope and aspect, provides the statistical modeller with a mother lode of information for developing and testing ideas on the responses of species to changes in environmental factors.
John Phillip Harison Acocks (1911–1979) authored the classic study on Veld Types of South Africa, which served the country as a benchmark for 50 years.
A major thrust of the NBI’s Stress Ecology Research Group (first based at the University of Cape Town as the Experimental Ecology Group, and then at the newly completed Kirstenbosch Research Centre), was the careful computerisation of the extensive plant ecological records of John Acocks, author of the classic Veld Types of South Africa. This invaluable data set enabled SANBI to produce a spatially clear national assessment of the vulnerability and adaptation of plant biodiversity to climate change.
Many of the recent advances in our understanding of the patterns of threat to our endemic species, and of trends and impacts of climate change, are due to the inherent value of good information on plant and animal distribution. Information management, and in particular the dissemination of biodiversity information, is now a primary objective of SANBI researchers.
Cycads are the oldest of seed plants, found through 280 million years of the fossil record. These large specimens of Encephalartos woodii, severely damaged by bark removal, were photographed in 1918 at Ngoye, Natal, the last specimens known in the wild.
Cycads, their ancient origins and their present precarious situation have attracted scientists to Kirstenbosch from the Garden’s establishment to the present day. Cycads are the oldest of seed plants, having survived three of the Earth’s mass extinction events, found through 280 million years of the fossil record. Globally, fewer than 400 species of cycad are still living. Perched as they are on the edge of extinction, most of South Africa’s 38 species are represented in the living collections established from 1913 by Harold Pearson, nurtured by John Winter and Dickie Bowler and studied exhaustively by John Donaldson and colleagues.
John Donaldson, head of SANBI’s Applied Biodiversity Research Programme based at the KRC, is a world authority on the biology and conservation of cycads. As Chairman of the IUCN Cycad Specialist Group, and Chair of the IUCN/SSC Plants Committee, he is well placed to appreciate the crisis faced by this charismatic group of living fossils. South Africa is one of the global hot spots of cycad diversity, with 68 per cent of its 38 species threatened with extinction and three of these listed as Extinct in the Wild – just a short step from oblivion.
Most of South Africa’s cycads are being driven towards extinction by illegal trade. These confiscated plants have been donated to the NBGs for use in SANBI’s species recovery projects.
Unlike the majority of South Africa’s threatened species, which have been reduced through land transformation and habitat loss, the precarious status of cycads exists because of illegal trade. Thousands of cycads end up in the hands of private collectors, prepared to pay top prices to augment their collections. In addition, the stripping of bark for traditional medicine has led to the complete loss of populations of some species in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. Despite the efforts by IUCN and conservation scientists, the best efforts have been futile, serving only to document what is a botanical disaster and a national disgrace. Species such as Encephalartos inopinus have been monitored by conservation authorities in Limpopo since 1992. They have recorded this species’ decline from 677 specimens in 1992 down to 81 in 2004 and there are unsubstantiated reports that the species might now be Extinct in the Wild. A classic case of going, going, gone.
Now extinct in the wild, Encepharlartos woodii survives in many botanical gardens, but because only male plants have ever been found, vegetative propagation from suckers is the only option for expanding the living collection.
Despite these healthy male cones of Wood’s Cycad Encephalartos woodii, seed propagation of this species is impossible as no female plants exist.
Fortunately, SANBI has, within its network of gardens, a diverse gene bank of specimens that can be used in ‘captive breeding’ programmes, possibly leading to their eventual re-establishment in their former habitats. But, as John Donaldson’s research has shown, cycads are dependent on symbiotic relationships with insect pollinators, algal nitrogen fixers and mammal dispersers of their seeds to maintain their populations. Restoration projects are far more complex than merely planting nursery-grown specimens back in the wild. Cycads remain the most critically threatened plant group in the world.
What had been an overgrown thicket of poplars, brambles and acacias in 1913 has been transformed into a cycad grove backed by a forest of indigenous Real Yellowwood Podocarpus latifolius, Small-leaved Yellowwood Podocarpus falcatus, Mountain Cedar Widdringtonia nodiflora and Cape Holly Ilex mitis.
The Kirstenbosch ‘seed primer’ is a clever innovation for enhancing seed germination.
A simple device, adapted from a ‘smoker’ for smoking trout, was used to collect the molecules emitted from veld fires for seed germination studies.
The Restio trial beds have proved to be a great success: the robust Cannomois grandis seen here is excellent for landscaping.
Research is often a serendipitous endeavour. Lord Rutherford is quoted as having said that ‘you can plan research, but you cannot plan discovery’. Such was the experience of Hannes de Lange, who in 1988 joined the Threatened Plants Laboratory established in Kirstenbosch that year by Kobus Eloff. De Lange set about studying the life history of restios, a key fynbos family, but one that had defied propagation for use in horticulture. Careful field observations convinced De Lange that the fires that characterise fynbos ecological processes must have a role in the germination of the abundant seeds produced by the 314 species in the restio family. He experimented with combinations of heat intensity and frequency, different ash loads, both in the laboratory and in the field, burning patches of veld at different seasons and in different fynbos communities – but nothing would induce the tiny restio nuts to germinate. In desperation he wondered whether the smoke billowing forth from veld fires might play a role in the process. He set up a simple device, adapted from a smoker used to smoke trout, and subjected seeds to the passage of smoke from the kindling of fynbos plants. Eureka! – within a few days the seeds germinated. From a near-to-zero germination rate, De Lange was obtaining over 90 per cent success for many of the restio species, and for many other fynbos plants that had previously been impossible to propagate. News of his success spread like the very wildfire that was the key to his idea, and, very soon, Australian researchers at Kirstenbosch’s sister garden at King’s Park in Perth had isolated the active chemicals involved in the process. Ever innovative, Hannes de Lange produced a most practical way of exploiting his discovery. By pumping smoke through a water bath, soaking filter papers in the water and then drying them, he was able to store the active compound for future use. He packaged the filter papers and distributed them as the ‘Kirstenbosch Primer’. Gardeners needed only to wet the paper in a plate or Petri dish, place seeds on the damp, smoke-primed surface, and wait for them to germinate.
Students prepare samples for phylogenetic studies in the Leslie Hill Molecular Laboratory.
One of the remarkable features of the research programme at Kirstenbosch is its breadth and depth. Following the wonderful philosophy of René Dubos – ‘think globally, act locally’ – the research agenda includes studies at the global scale (on climate-change modelling); at the continental scale (on plant taxonomy); at the national scale (biodiversity assessments, species conservation, vegetation mapping); and down to the molecular scale (studies on the evolution and relationships of selected plant and animal groups).
The establishment of a molecular laboratory at Kirstenbosch was a great advance in the modernisation of its facilities. By a stroke of good fortune, Leslie Hill, a longtime supporter and benefactor of Kirstenbosch, called one day to discuss the interest he had developed in molecular biology. Having read an article on molecular phylogenetics in the magazine Scientific American, Leslie, at the age of 92, expressed the view that Kirstenbosch should have the facilities to undertake such cutting-edge research. A few months later, and with his gift of R1.5 million, the Leslie Hill Molecular Laboratory was established at the KRC in 2000. The molecular biology programme has expanded from a focus on the evolution of proteas and other fynbos plants to include animal groups with special importance in South Africa, in particular reptiles and frogs. Our national obsession with the big, hairy mammals means we have tended to overlook our lizard fauna. With 267 species, of which 53 per cent are endemic, it is the third richest in the world, even richer in endemics than our terrestrial mammal fauna of 249 species, of which only 14 per cent are endemic to the country.
The use of sophisticated technologies such as those available at the Leslie Hill Molecular Laboratory allows researchers to explain often controversial phenomena. A well-documented observation in the Cape is the recent expansion of the range of the Hadeda Ibis Bostrychia hagedash, explained by the increased availability of nesting sites and feeding habitats in the expanding wooded suburbs of Western Cape towns over the past century. Hadedas were certainly unknown in Kirstenbosch during Pearson’s time, yet they are now very much part of the Garden’s avifauna. Less easily explained was the westward expansion – by 500 kilometres during the last decade – of the Painted Reed Frog Hyperolius marmoratus. To understand this, molecular techniques were needed.
The Painted Reed Frog Hyperolius marmoratus is a newcomer to the Cape, accidentally introduced by humans.
Early hypotheses proposed that the expansion was due to climate change – a much over-stated cause of many recent environmental phenomena. But careful genetic studies by Krystal Tolley, leader of the molecular biology group at the KRC (see A ‘cradle of faunal diversity’), and colleagues at the University of Stellenbosch have shown that the expansion can only be due to direct ‘human-mediated jump dispersal’ – a fancy way of saying that frogs or their fertile eggs might have been intentionally or accidentally transferred from their natural habitats in the east of the country to streams and dams further west. Reed frogs are often found in aquatic plants, transported around the country by nurserymen, homeowners and aquarists – so this frog is expanding its range as a result of being transported by humans, without any environmental change being needed. The noisy, entertaining and occasionally aggressive Helmeted Guineafowl and Egyptian Geese were introduced to decorate both garden and table, making their presence in the Western Cape another product of ‘human-mediated jump dispersal’.
The beautifully decorated Cape Dwarf Chameleon Bradypodion pumilum is a rare sight in the Garden.
Krystal Tolley, leader of the molecular biology group at the KRC, has been undertaking some fascinating research using the Cape’s rich diversity of Dwarf Chameleons as models of climatic, ecosystem and evolutionary change that has taken place over the past 14 million years. Using DNA sequence data for the 15 described species, plus a possible nine additional new species of Dwarf Chameleon, Tolley has established the correlation between speciation events (that is, the evolution of new species) and the changing environment of southern Africa. Her results indicate, furthermore, that southern Africa may truly be a ‘cradle of faunal diversity’ – a characteristic well established for plants, but not widely recognised for animals.
South Africa’s National Biodiversity Assessment 2011 was co-ordinated by SANBI’s team at the CBC. The status of terrestrial ecosystems presented in this map guides decisionmakers on conservation priorities.
As Pearson’s prescient thinking repeatedly illustrates, moving from basic science to the application of its results has increasingly influenced the role that Kirstenbosch, and particularly the Kirstenbosch Research Centre (KRC), has played in the country. On global and regional scales, climate change and land-degradation studies have contributed to a predictive understanding of how our ecosystems work and how they might be managed sustainably. The fine-scale information gathered by field biologists and synthesised by modellers and spatial planners has guided the selection of sites deserving priority action for conservation. Research at the molecular level helps us to understand problems of invasive species. Gradually, the collective scientific studies and research practised under the auspices of Kirstenbosch have fed into determination of future policy and planning.
Fynbos Fynmense – people making biodiversity work documents the highly successful Cape Action for People and the Environment (CAPE) programme, based at the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, Kirstenbosch.
Making science relevant to everyday issues received a boost from the Fynbos Biome Project (1970s–1990s). The legacy of this project has been continued through the Fynbos Forum, where researchers, land managers and civil society discuss issues of importance to the sustainable use of fynbos ecosystems. Although Kirstenbosch researchers played no part in the Fynbos Biome Project itself, the KRC and the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation (CBC), have provided the institutional and physical home for the audaciously ambitious, and highly successful Cape Action for People and the Environment (CAPE) programme. This massive programme was conceived and initiated by the strong team of environmental scientists and managers who cut their teeth on the Fynbos Biome Project. Seizing the opportunities offered by a new political dispensation and access to unprecedented funding available from the Global Environment Facility, the team planned a far-reaching strategy for the 20-year project, launched in 2000. The history of the programme, and the contributions of the 100-plus people who made it happen, are presented in the publication Fynbos Fynmense – people making biodiversity work, published by SANBI in 2006.
Biodiversity for Development – South Africa’s landscape approach to conserving biodiversity and promoting ecosystem resilience is a benchmark synthesis of work resulting from several decades in co-operative conservation programmes facilitated by SANBI.
CAPE epitomises the value of sharing resources. Kirstenbosch researchers, horticulturists, environmental educators and managers each contributed in small but meaningful ways towards the programme’s success. When the full scale of the investment in the programme – over R100 million – became evident, it crystallised the need for a Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, physically linked to the KRC, as a stable, robust home for the programme. The generous support of a UK charitable trust – the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation – provided the R12 million needed to construct the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, which is home to CAPE, the Succulent Karoo Ecosystem Programme (SKEP), the Table Mountain Fund and Conservation International’s Southern African Hotspots programme. The CBC’s conference and workshop facilities have become a melting pot for debate and development of new ideas and projects, a vibrant centre for intellectual growth, political dialogue and pragmatic action. SANBI’s leadership in mainstreaming biodiversity concepts into economic planning, through its role in producing the country’s first National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment in 2004 and the second in 2011, its first Protected Area Expansion Strategy, and the synthesis of lessons learned (published as a benchmark volume titled Biodiversity for Development – South Africa’s landscape approach to conserving biodiversity and promoting ecosystem resilience), place both Kirstenbosch and the Institute at the centre of innovation and relevance.
From humble beginnings, Kirstenbosch has expanded its science programme far beyond its origins in traditional plant taxonomy, through vegetation ecology, global-change modelling and molecular biology, to the full spectrum of planning and policy processes that link science to society. In the World Bank’s foreword to Fynbos Fynmense, the success of South African projects such as CAPE – and of Kirstenbosch, as a microcosm of the organisation – is summarised thus:
‘Good scientific information and subsequent awareness raising; institutional capacity and commitment; strategic cross-sectoral co-ordination and public-private partnerships; and entrepreneurship by the conservation community in seizing the opportunities to demonstrate that good biodiversity management is good for the economy, good for local development and good for business.’
These words apply to Kirstenbosch as a microcosm of the CAPE programme – where science meets society.
Some recent national policy guidelines co-ordinated by the SANBI team based at Kirstenbosch’s Centre for Biodiversity Conservation
A sampling of Kirstenbosch wildlife: FROM TOP TO BOTTOM Velvet Worm, Marsh Terrapin, Cape Fox, Small Grey Mongoose
FROM TOP TO BOTTOM Mountain Pride Butterfly, Cape Rain Spider, Boomslang, Southern Rock Agama, Table Mountain Ghost Frog, Cape Grysbok
An interesting diversity of animal groups is to be found in the Garden, including some rare Cape endemics. Perhaps the least familiar to visitors is the enigmatic Velvet Worm or Peripatus, a relict from Gondwana times, unchanged from its ancestors of 530 million years ago – a rare find among forest floor logs and leaf litter. Less elusive are the Garden’s butterflies. Pioneer fynbos ecologist Rudolf Marloth first described the pollination by the Mountain Pride Butterfly of the red flowering ground orchid Disa uniflora – the provincial floral emblem of the Western Cape. An exceptional sight is the Critically Endangered Table Mountain Ghost Frog, known only from a few forested streams in the gorges of Table Mountain. More easily seen is the Marsh Terrapin, found in the large pond in the centre of the main lawn. Snakes are seldom seen in the Garden, but the Boomslang is occasionally encountered. Although highly poisonous, this back-fanged snake is an effective predator of birds, but avoids humans. While most mammals have disappeared from Table Mountain, the Cape Grysbok, a shy but resilient endemic to the Fynbos Biome, is still resident in Kirstenbosch. Few mammalian predators survive on the Peninsula: Caracal and the Cape Fox are occasionally spotted in Kirstenbosch, while the more common and inquisitive Small Grey Mongoose, popularised by Ali Corbett’s stories of Monty the Mongoose, is a favourite among younger visitors.
