The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest of all floral kingdoms and is the only one to fall completely inside the borders of a single country.
It occupies about 90,000 square kilometers - that's only 0.04% of the total surface area of the Earth - yet it contains 9000 species of flowering plants - that's about 3% of the Earth's species.
Furthermore, two out of three of the Cape Floral Kingdom species are endemic, that means they occur nowhere else on earth. The highest level of endemism in the world.
What is a Floral Kingdom?
Floral Kingdoms are the largest natural units that can be determined for flowering plants. Regions that share the same combination of plant families form part of the same Floral Kingdom.
There are six Floral Kingdoms in the world: Australian, Antarctic, Cape, Holarctic, Neotropical and Palaeotropical.
The Cape Floral Kingdom is a World Heritage Site.
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ReplyDeleteWonderful area with loads to see when I was there in September 2015. I am taking another tour group with me in September 2018 and look forward to seeing more of the plants this area has to share. Can't get enough of this spectacular plant community...
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