Protea nona.

Protea seedling in mature fynbos.

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FYNBOS NEEDTO BURN?

by Rod &' Rachel Saunders, Silverhill Seeds, Kenilworth

, Fynbos needs fire' is mentioned in almost everybook or article written on fynbos. However, is thisstatement simply accepted as gospel, and copied

from one book to another, or is it actually true? Neither ofus is a botanist, and we have found ourselves questioningthis assumption more and more frequently. Perhaps notbeing botanists has distinct advantages as we are notburdened with botanical theories, and perhaps we view thefynbos with more open minds.

The first myth that we want to dispel is 'fynbos seedsonly germinate after fires'. For many fynbos species, this issimply not true. We spent Christmas walking in the Bain'sKloof Mountains, behind Wellington. High in themountains is a big population of Pratea nana, the lovelyneedle-leafed protea with red nodding flowers, some ofwhich escaped the last fire about seven years ago. Thepopulation consists of 7-year-old plants, flowering now forthe first time, and a few more or less 15-year-olds, some ofwhich are beginning to die. One plant had died andreleased its seeds from the old flowerheads, and under­neath it were thirty or forty l-year-old seedlings that hadgerminated in the middle of 15-year-old veld. Close by wesat in the shade of a huge Pratea nitida, and had to becareful not to damage the numerous seedlings coming upunder the still living shrub. For this to occur, the maturefynbos must have open spaces where there is room forseedlings to grow, and where the exposed seeds canexperience the temperature fluctuations required for seedgermination, but because of the impoverished soil andharsh conditions on the majority of the south-western Capemountains, open spaces between clumps of restios, ericas,and proteas are probably the norm, with thick vegetationonly occurring on south-facing slopes and in river gullies.

There are obviously species that require fire to stimulateseed germination - many of the legume seeds need theheat of a fire, and some of the nut-seeded restio speciesrequire either the heat of the fire or the smoke, or both,and no seed germination is seen between fires. But formany of the species, fire does not seem to be essential.Bulbous plant seeds germinate very well without fire, asdo Erica seeds. Smoke and heat may certainly increase thegermination rate so that there is a huge flush of seedlingsafter a fire, but without it, germination still occurs at alower rate that is sufficient to renew the ageing population.

The second myth is 'fynbos always recovers after fire'.How often have we read this in newspapers, magazinesand learned publications? No, it does not always recover,and often recovery is very superficial with the resultingveld missing many of its previous constituents. Anexample is the Jonkershoek valley, in the Hottentot'sHolland Mountains. This area is one of the wettest inSouth Africa, and after fire, it apparently recovers rapidlyand looks great. Recruitment of Pratea neriifolia,Leucospermum gueinzii, Leucadendron sessile, ericas suchas E. savilea and E. fastigiata, grasses and restios isexcellent and the bulbous flora responds with greatenthusiasm and wonderful displays of colour. However,there used to be a reasonable sized population of Prateagrandiceps high on the slopes of the valley, and this hasnow completely disappeared. Two fires only eight years

Veld &' Flora June 2000

Anemone tenuifolia flowering with great enthusiasm after a fire at Jonkershoek. This wasthe second fire in only 8 years and some species have not had time to set seed and conse­quently have been completely destroyed.

apart was one fire too many for thisslow growing species which had onlyjust flowered for the first time sincethe last fire, and had as yet set no seed.When the second fire swept throughthe valley last summer, the plantsburned, and left nothing behind.

Another example is in the Cederbergnear Clanwilliam. Where does one finddecent sized populations of the oncefrequently encountered Prateamagnifica in the Cederberg anymore?On a recent trip up Krakadouw Peakwe found two plants, growing across asheet of rock and protected from thefrequent fires that burn there. It growsslowly, flowering for the first time onlyafter about eight years, and eight yearsbetween fires is now an uncommonoccurrence. A third example is the topof the Montagu Pass in the OuteniquaMountains near George. This area lastburned three years ago, and then againthis summer. Pratea aurea and Leuca­dendron uliginosum are now extinct inthe burned area - the seedlings wereonly about 40 cm high when thesecond fire came through. The onlyplants that have survived here are thebulbous plants that thrive after fire,and the re-sprouters, as it is unlikelythat many of the re-seeders had hadtime to produce seed. If one examinesthe species occurring on thesefrequently burned mountains, there aremany re-sprouters such as Proteanitida, Erica cerinthoides, Leuca­dendron salignum, many restios suchas Elegia, Hypodiscus and Thamno­chortus species, and many so-called'weedy' species such as Cyclopia,Muraltia and Stoebe, but most of theslower growing re-seeders are doingbadly, and some have disappearedcompletely.

The next aspect in fynbos recoveryis when did it burn and what did theweather do in the season after the fire?Fynbos, on the whole, burns insummer, any time from October or

ovember to March or April. However,if the Cape has an abnormally drywinter, as happened this last year, thenfires can occur in June and July aswell, and then what happens to thefynbos? One area of Fernkloof atureReserve at Hermanus burned in themiddle of this last winter, and we wentback several times after the fire to seewhat was doing what. The first thing that we noticed wasthat at the end of spring all the Proteaceae seedlings weretin - presumably they had germinated in August and hadonly had two months of growing time before the rainstopped and the heat of summer arrived. It will be inter­esting to see how many have survived at the end of thesummer - we predict very few. ormally the seeds wouldgerminate in the autumn, and the seedlings would havefour or even five months in which to grow big enough rootsto keep them going through the hot dry summer. The nextthing that we noticed was the lack of bulbous plants thatusually flourish after fire. These would normally breakdormancy in March or April, and would have been in fullgrowth when the fire came in winter. They certainly didnot seem to come up again after the fire, and the only twospecies that we saw in flower were Moraea lurida and aGeissorhiza species. Will they all come up again next

Veld &- Flora June 2000

autumn, or were they killed by the fire? So, recoverv of thefynbos in this area has so far been extremely poor. -

What did the weather do after the fire? As anyone wholives in the south-western Cape will know, the summers of1998/1999 and 1999/2000 were dreadful with firesoccurring in every mountain range one can think of. Someof the veld was old and some was very young, implyingthat some areas should have recovered better than others.However, this was not the case and the reason for this wasthe kind of weather we had after the fires. The rainfall thislast winter was fickle and generally poor. One area thatfared badly was the Little Karoo with Ladismith getting50 mm of rain the whole season (normally they receiveabout 400 mm). A large area of the Swartberg Mountainsbehind Oudtshoorn and Ladismith burned last September ­an area that had not burned recently before, so theoreticallyit should have had a good seed-store and should recover well.-

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In the area were huge stands of Pratea eximia and P. repens,Leucadendran barkerae, many restio species, Pelargonium,and several Erica species. In November we walked throughthe area and found nothing at all except a few restiospecies re-sprouting rather unenthusiastically, and a fewplants of Pelargonium ovale that had escaped the fire. Thiswas obviously a combination of the lack of any moisture inthe ground, and the intense heat during September andOctober. We visited the area again in mid-February and thistime some seed regeneration had occurred. Some timeduring the summer the area had had rain and temperaturessuitable for seed germination. However, after countingprotea seedlings (about 2-3 cm high) under and around oldburned adult plants, we found an average of about twoseedlings per adult, an extremely low regeneration figure.The area can probably expect its first winter rain in Marchor April, so perhaps more seeds will germinate then. ButApril is eight months after the fire, so just how many seedswill have survived rodent predation, extremely strongwinds and high temperatures remains to be seen. Will allthe re-seeders disappear and only the re-sprouters remain?

So fynbos does not always recover. The south-westernCape has now had two very hot and dry summers with anabnormally high number of fires and there are now veryfew areas of mature fynbos left. This is a potentially serioussituation, as if we are confronted by another dry winter thisyear, recovery will be slow or non-existent, and the fynboswill be in danger. It also means that for the next eight tofifteen years we need no fires at all in the southern Cape.Given the fire record over the past two years, this is anunlikely scenario!

We feel that before one can answer the question 'Doesfynbos need fire' one should define what sort of fynbos oneis talking about, as all fynbos is certainly not the same. Aneasy division to make is between dry or arid fynbos asfound in the Cederberg Mountains, northern slopes of theSwartberg, and the mountains of Namaqualand and theRichtersveld; and the well-watered fynbos of the Jonker­shoek valley, the southern slopes of the Langeberg and theOuteniqua Mountains.

J~1::k:'" ;. ~

Poor regeneration of Protea seedlings after fire in the Swartberg.

It is debatable whether dry and arid fynbos needs toburn, ever. Walking through these areas there are alwaysopen spaces for new plants to germinate, the vegetation isusually short and one sees good recruitment of youngplants in amongst the older vegetation. Old plants die, andnew ones take their places. Regeneration after fires in theseareas is excruciatingly slow and for adequate recovery of allspecies, a fire cycle of 30 to 40 years is probably required.

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Or even better perhaps, no fire at all. One will not get thespectacular displays of bulbous plants flowering en masseafter fire, but they still flower, and they still set seed andthe seeds still germinate. Perhaps some species will sufferand disappear, but many other slow-growing species willbenefit.

In the well-watered fynbos, the situation is quitedifferent. Some of the bulbous species, which cannotcompete with the thick mass of vegetation, disappearwithout fires as do many of the smaller perennials andshrubs. If this fynbos is to remain and the vegetationprevented from going to forest, then it probably does needto burn, but at a much longer cycle than is happening atpresent. In areas such as the de Vasselot Nature Reservenear Plettenberg Bay, the fynbos reaches mammoth propor­tions within a few years after fire. Many species are shadedout, and eventually the vegetation becomes reduced inspecies with Leucadendran eucalyptifolium, and restiossuch as Elegia equisetacea covering large areas. But firesevery three or four years (as is happening now) is far toofrequent, and is causing more damage than the lack offires ever could.

So, the answer to the original question 'Does fynbosneed to burn?' is: 'It depends!'. It depends on the type offynbos and on the circumstances of the fire. Probably thewell-watered fynbos can cope with fire as long as theinterval between fires is sufficient to allow all species toget to seed-bearing age. But we feel that arid or dry fynbosdoes not need fire at all as it regenerates adequatelywithout it. And if one has a combination of fire followed bydrought in the next winter, fynbos cannot recover. As onecannot foretell what the next rainy season will be like,perhaps we should be more concerned when yet anotherfire flares up in the mountains.

The constant referral to fire being normal and necessaryin fynbos has led to a sense of complacency amongst thepublic, managers of fynbos areas and botanists. We believethat the power of recovery of the fynbos and the beneficialeffects of fire are grossly overrated in our already artifi­cially disturbed surroundings. Perhaps in the past when

fires were less frequent and onlyoccurred every fifteen or twenty oreven thirty years, and when fynboshad time to reach maturity, then firewas beneficial, or at least, not asdestructive. But unfortunately thesituation has changed andmanagement practices and attitudesneed to change as well. Seedlingsurvival depends on the conditions ofthe first year after fire, and so isparticularly sensitive to fluctuationsin the climate that we are currentlyexperiencing. A dry season after adevastating fire will have a far greatereffect on seedlings than on matureplants which can cope with an odddry year. Thus the conservative routeis to enable as many species aspossible to reach maturity. Ideally ifwe are to maintain the speciesdiversity, firstly the slowest growingshrubs should be allowed to flowerand set seed, and secondly, the fastestgrowing over-storey shrubs should notbe allowed to become too senescent.

The situation in the southern andsouth-western Cape at present is at the

one extreme - there is virtually no mature fynbos anywherein the entire floral kingdom. This is not something to becomplacent about! Our feeling is therefore, NO FIRES, atleast for the next fifteen or more years. @

AcknowledgementsOur thanks go to Peter Linder, Anthony Hitchcock andDee Snijrnan for discussions and suggestions.

Veld &- Flora June 2000