adriaan_grobler's Identifications

Clanwilliam Cedar

Many of the trees are dead. Theories are a dime a dozen. My favourite is that the trees only naturally occur in fire-safe rock outcrops, where their roots additionally have access to water stored in the rock layers. The deaths are partly due to increased temperatures (pre enhanced global warming - pollen records show they loved the ice ages), the longevity of the skeletons (they take decades to rot) and recent management which is trying to keep the fires out of them, but which results in more vegetation which gets fires into the rock outcrops which kills them. Thus more frequent fires might (a big might) help them. They are serotinous (which means that they store their seeds on the plant in fire-safe capsules) and only regenerate after fires. But seed set is low, and recruitment almost non-existent. Hundreds of trees are planted annually by volunteers, but less than 30% survive the planting, and less than 1% survive the next fire. This species is listed as IUCN Critically Endangered, with 94% of monitored plants (some were planted in inappropriate habitats though) dead in the last generation. If you want to see this plant alive, in the Cedarberg named after it (although most maps now misspell this as Cederberg, after the Afrikaans Sederberg), dont wait too long.

Comparitive state of Cedars - Ken Howell-Howes 1934 vs Tony Rebelo 2017. The left hand pictures in every case are Ken Howell-Howes' photos from November 1934. The right hand pics are Tony Rebelo's. Although the pictures cannot be perfectly matched, the skylines, foreground boulders, footpaths etc give us sufficient guidance. Pic 1 suggests that a plantation of cedars planted in the 1950s has partially survived [it wasn't there in 1934 - note that the same bend is still in the path!]; pic 2 [with the Uilsgat needles in the background] suggests that at least some of the cedars behind the large boulder have survived the last 83 years [and note the dead ones in the older pic]. Pic no. 3 shows the edge of a cedar plantation from the 1920's that has long disappeared, as well as the large tree up on the ridge on the left. Nevertheless, Tony's recent photo shows that least some of the cedars have survived ...
[My apologies to Tony - I'm sure his photo resolution is better than this, but I had to enlarge from the internet].
Tony commented:

The early photos are almost certainly in rephoto South Africa already.
The problem is getting them ahead of a trip and finding the exact spot. You need to:

• find the exact position: so you need a printout and then you need to move back and forth to find the same spot

• you need to use the same lens. Most probably 35mm and the same height.
  Those are easy enough! it is the hassle of finding the pictures in the first place - knowing that one is going to an area, downloading the pictures and then allocating perhaps a few hours to finding the exact spot.
  But as you can see: Cedars are well studied, and charismatic enough to get similar enough shots just of odd plants. A pity the same has not been done for Wabooms and Common Sunshine Conebushes: they probably live a lot longer ...