Once extinct flower now flourishing in a South African national park

Table Mountain National Park, extending south along a peninsula from Table Mountain, is a global biodiversity hotspot.

A newly updated checklist, published in 2025, indicates 2,785 plant species within this approximately 250 square kilometre area.

That is a higher number of species than found in the entire of someEuropean countries.

But the checklist also highlights 261 endangered species.

Jean Stephenson is a citizen scientist who contributed to the new checklist.

Stephenson volunteers with the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers.

She looks for threatened plants in the field and uploads pictures to the iNaturalist platform for identification by experts.

Staavia dodii is one of Table Mountain National Park’s rare plants.

“It is really limited to a few square kilometres in the whole world. And we’re very privileged to have it close by," she says.

Stephenson and other volunteers’ work using the iNaturalist site was a new contribution to the checklist, which underwent its first comprehensive update since 1950.

Dr Nicola van Wilgen-Bredenkamp is one of the scientists who compiled the new list.

"It’s been a very exciting process because we live in this amazingly diverse place," says Van Wilgen-Bredenkamp.

"We’ve got incredible diversification of both plants and invertebrates. And what we wanted to do was come up with a new checklist that will help us to prioritise species for management action.”

A species that has benefited from management action is Erica verticillata.

Once extinct in the wild, it is now flourishing within Tokai Park, which forms part of Table Mountain National Park.

Trevor Adams worked with the late Dr. Anthony Hitchcock to bring this species back to life.

“Through Anthony’s determination, he found various clones in other botanical gardens throughout the world," says Adams.

"It was then tasked to us horticulturalists and nursery staff to propagate these plants. This all culminated in us planting three of these clones back here in Lower Tokai Park in 2007.”

One of the greatest threats to the Table Mountain National Park’s vegetation, known as fynbos, is alien species.

The new checklist has identified at least 437 non-native plants on the peninsula.

This group of workers from the Sugarbirds NGO is removing Port Jackson plants from the Silvermine area.

Karen Engelbrecht from South African National Parks explains a key reason why this labour-intensive work is so important.

"This is Cape fynbos, so obviously, the alien vegetation basically can take over and completely take up all the space, so we won’t have any indigenous vegetation," she says.

Capetonian walkers and hikers have easy access to Table Mountain National Park.

It's a place many locals go to exercise and unwind.

“It’s obviously a spectacular environment to walk in," says local Adrian Vardie.

"There is a magnificent diversity."

Table Mountain National Park’s World Heritage Site status is in recognition that it is one of the world’s great centres of terrestrial biodiversity.

The newly updated plant checklist will help scientists to better conserve this precious habitat.