Fynbos - Overview and History

Overview and History

The word fynbos is often confusingly said to mean "fine bush" in Afrikaans, but the sense is as in "gracile", "slender" – scrub as opposed to "bos", which in most contexts means "forest", rather than "bush". Typical fynbos foliage is ericoid rather than fine. The term, in its pre-Afrikaans, Dutch form, "fynbosch", was recorded by Noble as being in casual use in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century John Bews referred to: "South-Western or Cape Region of Macchia or Fynbosch". He said: "In this well-known region where the rain occurs in winter and the summers are more or less dry, the dominant vegetation is of a sclerophyllous type and there is little or no natural grassland, though there are many grasses..." He also refers to a high degree of endemism in the grasses in that region. Elsewhere he speaks of the term as "...applied by the inhabitants of the Cape to any sort of small woodland growth that does not include timber trees"; in the current vernacular, this still is the effective sense of the word. However, in the technical, ecological sense, the constraints are more demanding. In the latter half of the 20th century "fynbos" gained currency as the term for the distinctive vegetation of the southwestern Cape.