news from the CRE W
CREW, the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers, aims to equip a network of volunteers from a range of socio-economic backgrounds with the means to monitor and conserve South
Africa’s threatened plant species.The programme links volunteers with their local conservation agencies and particularly with local land stewardship initiatives to ensure the conservation of
key sites for threatened plant species. Visit the CREW on www.sanbi.org/biodiversity/tspmain.htm.
Marasmodes Day
By Ismail Ebrahim, Project Manager: CREW-CFR,
South African National Biodiversity Institute
Freedom Day on 27 April is an important day in
the history of South Africa. It commemorates
the first democratic elections held in South
Africa in 1994 that propelled us into a new era
of freedom and opportunity.
CREW has found the perfect way to celebrate
this day. We call it Marasmodes Day and our
sole purpose on this day is to monitor as many
species of the Marasmodes genus as possible.
Marasmodes is a small genus in the Asteraceae
family and consists of 13 species including two
undescribed new species. This is a relatively
unknown genus and this is probably the first
time you have heard about it. It is characterized
by small ericoid leaves, small discoid flower
heads and a glandular corolla. Most of the
species flower between April and June so it was
the perfect way to celebrate Freedom Day.
The genus is confined to the lowlands of
the south-western Cape and occurs mostly on
clay soil in renosterveld. Due to the habitat
loss that has occurred on the lowlands, all the
members of this genus are highly threatened.
Our target area this year was the West Coast
and we were focused on finding Marasmodes
trifida and M. fasciculata. These are two of
130 VELD&FLORA | SEPTEMBER 2009
the eight new species described in a recent
revision of the genus.
ABOVE: Marasmodes trifida.
BELOW: Marasmodes trifida, not the most breathtaking plant,
is highly threatened.
We started off the day at a site near the
BOTTOM: Marasmodes fasciculata in full flower.
Kalbaskraal railway station off the N7 about Photos: I. Ebrahim.
55 km from Cape Town. The Kalbaskraal site is
mainly covered by Atlantis Sand Fynbos but on
the shale soils you find renosterveld and these
are the areas we were searching for to find the
Marasmodes. The area is heavily invaded by
Port Jackson but the landowner is making a
sterling effort to eradicate the aliens and get
the veld restored to its original state. We split
into two groups to ensure that we covered the
site completely. After walking through some
lovely sand fynbos and finding special species
like Leucadendron thymifolium (Critically
Endangered), Serruria linearis (Endangered)
and Xiphotheca reflexa (Endangered) – to
mention a few – we started getting into heavily
invaded areas. This suggested that we were
approaching the richer clay soils and we were
now in the right area to find the Marasmodes.
We were becoming quite doubtful of finding
the plants while wading through nothing but a
sea of Port Jacksons until one of our eagle-eyed
volunteers spotted a yellow flowering shrub
amongst the aliens. We all rushed to see – and
we had found Marasmodes trifida!
This small shrub grows up to 40 cm high and
has narrow linear leaves with terminal yellow
flower heads. We scanned the area but could
 your best shot

only find one plant. I phoned the other group Send us your best shot. Email info@botanicalsociety.co.za
to find out if they had any success finding any
plants and they were on their way back to cars
and found a stand of 12 plants about 50 m from
where we parked. We were then invited to the
farmhouse for a cup of tea with the landowner.
We had a look at some of the pictures that the
farmer had taken of the site in spring that had
us all drooling at the sight of the magnificent
bulb displays. He has definitely convinced us
that a visit in spring will be very worthwhile.
Our next site was the farm Groenrivier and
we started on the eastern end of the farm.
After a long walk through nothing but grazed
grassland and Port Jacksons we finally got to
a decent piece of natural veld. Unfortunately,
it was sand fynbos and we were not likely
to find any Marasmodes at this site. We did
find some of the sand fynbos specials and a
population of Erica malmesburiensis (Critically
Endangered). This was followed by a visit to
one of the historical sites of Protea odorata
(Critically Endangered), which is now confined
to one site and known from about 23 plants.
The area is very heavily overgrazed and we had
to walk past a bone yard to get to the site. The
area is fenced off and there is still some natural
veld but it was not in a good condition and we
did not find any Marasmodes species.
We decided that after walking through so Empty promises
much degraded veld we needed to find a site I belong to a group of hackers and when working on Table Mountain we often come across
that would raise our spirits again so we decided orchids. During January and February, the Blue Disa, Disa graminifolia, was out and we took
to visit Schoongezicht farm near Philadelphia. some pictures of this fantastic beauty including one with a possible pollinator coming in for
Schoongezicht is recognized as one of the a landing to check out what the flower has to offer and pollinate it at the same time. Neville
core flora sites within the City of Cape Town Attridge took the photo, and only afterwards did we realize how lucky we were to have caught
and is most well known for being the home of the insect as well! The Blue Disa is nectarless and uses its sweet smell to attract potential
Babiana blanda (Critically Endangered), which pollinators like this little bee.
was re-discovered on this farm in 2006. (See Buddy Mockford
Veld & Flora December 2006). This time we were
looking for Marasmodes fasciculata which has
alternate leaves, and flower heads arranged
in terminal clusters of 4-20 per branch. As we
entered the site we immediately found a large
population of M. fasciculata. They were in full
flower and the late afternoon sun gave us
perfect conditions for taking stunning pictures
of this somewhat lacklustre plant.
Our day had been a great success and we felt
blessed to have spent Freedom Day looking for
these highly threatened species. We could feel
proud that we are contributing to the freedom
and protection of the Marasmodes genus.
Our focus on Marasmodes has had very
positive impacts for the genus. Previously these
plants were overlooked in the field but due to
our creating awareness about how special this
genus is, our volunteers are now very excited
about finding out more about these plants.
Hopefully on Marasmodes Day 2010 we will be
able to mobilize more people to look for and
monitor the species in the Marasmodes genus.
A small Anthomyia fly pollinator caught in action on Marasmodes fasciculata. Photo: I. Ebrahim.

SEPTEMBER 2009 | VELD&FLORA 131