The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: implications for succulent plant conservation in southern Africa

摘要

The richest diversity of succulent plants globally occurs naturally on the southern African subcontinent, essentially the geographical area bordered in the north by the Cunene and Zambezi Rivers and lapped in the west by the Atlantic Ocean and in the east by the Indian Ocean (Van Wyk & Smith, 2001). For a number of succulent plant families popular among collectors, notably the Mesembryanthemaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Asphodelaceae and Crassulaceae, this region harbours very significant numbers of species. In addition, all these families have sub-continental levels of endemism at the species level in excess of 80 percent. One area in southern Africa in particular, the Succulent Karoo Biome that stretches along the dry, western, coastal and adjacent interior of South Africa and Namibia, is the only arid hotspot recognised in the world (Mittermaier & Mittermaier, 2001). The considerable diversity of succulent plants, although highest in southern Africa's arid, winter-rainfall, western parts, also pervades all the other floristic regions of southern Africa, including the spiny thickets, grasslands, fynbos and xerophyt-ic shrublands. With this immense diversity comes considerable responsibility to manage and use it wisely and sustainably for the benefit of current and future generations.