Divided by mountains, there is a thriving desert on South Africa’s Western Cape where bushy, sandy plains belie beautiful, botanical treasures. This unassuming landscape is the world’s only arid plant hotspot—and home to a third of all succulent plant species in the world.
Where herds of elephant, black rhino, and Cape buffalo once roamed, Succulent Karoo—the most species-rich semidesert on the planet—now boasts some 3,000 succulent plant species. Forty percent are endemic and don’t grow anywhere else.
Upon closer inspection, the Karoo’s low, gray-brown bushes are blooming with bright flowers in reds, pinks, purples, yellows, and oranges. The succulents survive the semidesert climate by storing water in their roots and plump, swollen leaves.
Yet, Sanbona’s succulents have excellent coping adaptations.
Some can bury themselves in the soil to minimize water loss, absorbing the sunlight they need for photosynthesis through translucent “windows” at soil level; some have very short life cycles, going from seed, to flower, to completion in just one growing season.
One of the most abundant succulents in the Succulent Karoo is the geophyte, a plant that stores water in a delicate, bulb-like, not to mention beautiful, appendage. But succulents are not the only living things that abound in the semidesert here.
Their fleshy leaves provide vital sustenance to many insects, including termites, monkey beetles, and long-tongued flies. In turn, these insects draw scorpions, tortoises, birds, lizards, and a curious little creature endemic to the region known as a Van Zyl’s golden mole—a tiny mammal with no visible eyes or ears—which tunnels just below the surface of the sand dunes.
The insects of the Karoo are excellent pollinators, playing a crucial role in flower morphology and the speciation of the area.
Yet, despite their hardy characteristics, the rich plant and animal life of this region are vulnerable to overgrazing by livestock, exotic plant poaching, and diamond and sand mining—human activities that conservationists are rallying against.
As such, Sanbona Wildlife Reserve conserves and protects its land itself with income generated from nature-based tourism.
