When Eugéne Hahndiek, conservation manager at Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area, posted a photo of a dainty fynbos flower on iNaturalist in August 2022 he never thought it could be a species believed to have been extinct for 42 years.
He photographed the flower in the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA, close to Africa’s southernmost tip, and at the time identified it as a common Moraea species, known as Moraea galaxia.
iNaturalist is an app through which citizen scientists record observations of biodiversity across the world.
Hahndiek then forgot all about it. Well, until this year, when his photograph caught the eye of scientist Dr John Manning, who identified it as a Moraea species the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wild-flowers (Crew) had been searching for.
When the Crew team visited the site in July they didn’t find it in bloom.
When they returned in August, Crew’s Sharndre Heuvel, with luck, found the species at a new locality.
Hahndiek had found a species that was believed to be extinct – the Moraea minima, or Mini Galaxy, last officially seen in 1981. It occurs only on Agulhas Sand Fynbos, a critically endangered vegetation type. Hahndiek and the NWSMA team, along with Crew, have since found two populations of Moraea minima.
Ismail Ebrahim, Crew’s Project Manager for the Cape Floristic Region, stated: “This rediscovery illustrates the value of regular monitoring and encouraging people to participate in programmes like Crew and post their findings on iNaturalist. This is critical for understanding the exceptionally special plants we have and the steps that have to be taken to conserve these species.”
Hahndiek added: “It seems this special species is difficult to find because it’s quite finnicky. What we’ve found is that it only flowers in spring for a few hours after it has rained. Then the flowers disappear, until the following rains.
“The other challenge is that these plants seem to often grow in slightly precarious spaces, for example road verge or in the middle of a road. That’s why we need to know where they are, to plan how to protect them.”
Funding support from the Table Mountain Fund (TMF), an associated Trust of WWF South Africa, WWF South Africa, the Mapula Trust and Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust makes this possible. With support from the TMF, botanical expert Geoff Nichols is undertaking botanical assessments across fynbos landscapes in the NWSMA.
He has covered 13 342 ha on foot in the past year, documenting the species he finds.
Nichols and Hahndiek discovered a number of endangered species, including Erica oblongiflora, Erica penduliflora and Phylica parvula, three endangered species on the SANBI Red List and the critically endangered Erica berzeliodes. Visit www.nuwejaars.com for more info.
