Generations of botanists had tramped unwittingly past the diminutive blue flower without noticing it. However, worldwide fame now beckons for a previously unidentified iris that flowers for just two weeks a year in a field of daisies in the Western Cape.
South African plant experts who finally spotted the iris last year have launched an online auction of the naming rights to the new species.
It will culminate in a gala dinner in Cape Town on March 31, aimed at highlighting the fragile biodiversity of the tip of Africa and raising money to save indigenous plants like these.
“This iris was already endangered when it was found,” said Amy Goldblatt, a fundraiser for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Table Mountain campaign. “Some species, such as this iris, have a tiny radius. If you plough a field the size of a rugby pitch, they can be gone from the planet forever.”
Koos Claasens spotted the pale blue flower when he bought his farm at Jacobsbaai, on the Saldanha Peninsula, 140km north of Cape Town in 1995.
“It only flowers for two weeks in September and it is well hidden by the daisies. When I saw it, I did not realize it was undiscovered. Then a PhD student came here to do a species count. We squared off an area of 10m by 10m and found 91 different species in that small plot. She made enquiries and eventually confirmed the iris was new,” he said.
Claasens’s farmland has been identified by the Table Mountain fund for one of 28 “corridors” it wants to protect from the ravages of climate change and real estate development. The 6 billion rand (US$870 million) campaign aims to purchase some land and, in other cases, finance stewardship schemes with landowners.
Goldblatt said the Western Cape was one of six “floral kingdoms” in the world identified by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
“Ours is the smallest floral kingdom, but the richest. About 6,200 of its 9,000 species grow nowhere else. Table Mountain alone supports around 2,200 plant species which is more than the entire United Kingdom,” she said.
Iris bulbs were among the first southern African plants taken to Europe in the 17th century.
Goldblatt was not able to predict how much the auction, which is being run by Strauss & Co, would raise. However, she already had in mind a favored highest-bidder.
“We cannot sell the rights to an oil or gas company — that would be against WWF rules. But this would be a beautiful gift from Prince William to Kate Middleton,” she said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS