Meetings of the Botanical Society of the Netherlands

South-Africa has an enormous potential biological richness within its boundaries considering the geographical situation, the geological age and the great climatological differences. Superficially landscape and vegetation show a high degree of homogeneity which at a closer view may be divided into two types: On the one hand the actual homogeneity of extreme, arid and semi-arid regions of the western part of the central plateau and the more temperate, but badly impoverished areas, where the original forest and savannah are changed into treeless graslands and extensive (dwarf) shrub vegetations; erosion as a result of overgrazing and frequent fires and the rapid dispersion of exotic plant species are in many respects an alarming threat to vegetation and soil. On the other hand the seeming homogeneity of the very differentiated areas of of the SW. Cape and parts of Natal and Transvaal; the Cape Peninsula with its great floristic richness, the homogeneous physiognomy and the absence of dominants is the most striking example of this type: this vegetation shows the character of a continuum in optima forma as the resultant of a.o. the underground of old, acid Table Mountain Sandstone and the mainly climatological gradation of the environment. The mean difference in temperature of 10° between the cold water of the Atlantic Ocean on the western side and the warm water of the Indian Ocean on the eastern side of the Peninsula, meeting at Cape Point, provides possibly the most important ecological factor. The “Veld-Types of South-Africa” (Acocks 1953) with the vegetation map were much appreciated for a basic orientation, as well as other publications and personal communications of the cooperators of the Botanical Research Institute of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services at Pretoria. Vegetation research in South-Africa is still in an early stage but it shows a promising development. The ecological approximation of natural vegetation in particular awaits further interest and analysis.