S.Africa's iconic protea flower relocates as climate warms
"They're all different," the 55-year-old farmer said of the assorted blooms from the diverse Proteaceae family that has more than 350 species in South Africa, from firework-like "pincushion" varieties to delicate "blushing brides".
He picked out a majestic pink and white crown, nearly the size of his head, that has taken four years to reach its impressive size. "The King Proteas are very slow to grow," Thuynsma said.
The largest of the proteas, the King Protea, is South Africa's national flower.
It has lent its name to the national cricket team and countless brands. It features on the currency and is the logo for South Africa's presidency this year of the G20 group of leading economies, which convenes a summit in November.
It is also the country's largest flower export with more than 10 million stems sent abroad last year, worth close to 275 million rand ($15 million), according to the Cape Flora industry organisation.
Its status offers the King Protea some protection but almost half of South Africa's other protea species face extinction because of pressures on their native habitats in the mountains of the Cape, according to South Africa's National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).
These include habitat loss to agriculture, the proliferation of invasive alien species and "changes to natural fire cycles", SANBI said in a 2021 report.
- Icon -
"People come to South Africa to see proteas," Nigel Barker, a professor in plant sciences at the University of Pretoria, told AFP. "It's the plant equivalent of the elephant or the lion."
Most proteas are endemic or semi-endemic to the Cape Floral Kingdom biome of "fynbos" ("fine bush") that stretches across the southern tip of South Africa and is one of the world's richest flora biodiversity hotspots.
But climate projections predict "hotter, drier conditions", Barker said. "We'll be looking at a completely different vegetation type in the future, semi-desert almost in some places."
"Many species, because they're so range-restricted, will probably go extinct under those scenarios," he said.
"The only solution we have is to cultivate them artificially... in greenhouses or farms where you control irrigation," Barker said.
An example is Thuynsma's farm in the grasslands of the north, where he began planting proteas three decades ago.
Here, winters are dry and frosty, and the summers rainy -- conditions very different to those in the far south where the proteas are at home.
- Gel for irrigation -
Through trial and error, Thuynsma has been able to cultivate close to 200 protea varieties, including some long forgotten and abandoned by farmers in their original habitats.
In his latest experiment, he has planted 36 varieties with just two litres (four pints) of saturated gel for irrigation.
"I hope to unlock the power of some of these varieties," Thuynsma said. "They come from the Western Cape out of very harsh conditions, so they do have it in them."
"I learn from them, I learn with them. And, hopefully, in the future I can advise my nursery public -- and even estates -- how to plant this lovely fynbos without irrigation," he said.
"I don't think I have a solution for climate change," he joked, crouched over a small seedling in freshly turned soil. "But I do have a solution: to plant proteas."
A few metres (yards) away, in a warm nursery, thousands of protea sprouts awaited their turn in the soil.
"I love them, I protect them, I collect them," Thuynsma said. "The protea is part of South Africa's DNA."
jcb/br/kjm
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News24
11 hours ago
- News24
From apartheid's all-white world to HIV frontlines: The activist doctor with a 5-year fix for SA healthcare
HIV researcher Francois Venter heads up Ezintsha, the Wits-based medical research centre, and is known for speaking without any regard for self-preservation – something a lecturer friend calls 'borderline cancel language'. Venter grew up under apartheid, weaned on Springbok radio and weekly military-style marching drills in Phalaborwa, Limpopo, where he was one of seven children and – until he landed at Wits – had 'never met a black person who wasn't a servant'. Sean Christie talked to him about his unorthodox inaugural full professorship lecture, his work during the height of the Aids crisis, the Trump administration's defunding of HIV and scientific research and his shoot-from-the-hip fix of our healthcare system. An inaugural lecture is a formal event thrown by a university to commemorate the lecturer's appointment to full professorship. They are usually pinnacle-of-career moments. Francois Venter's inaugural lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2023 was not typical. He began by recounting years of successfully dodging requests to deliver the lecture, often blaming the university's email system for his lack of response. While he dutifully name-checked his professional role models and heroes, he also took the opportunity to give credit to his tennis and rock climbing coaches. Interwoven with these acknowledgements were lively anecdotes - such as drinking tequila with Dexter Holland of The Offspring rock band (who earned a PhD in molecular biology in 2017) and receiving not one, but two, untimely calls from Standard Bank ('I swear I turned this off …'). Venter's aversion to formalism, it seems, remains resolutely untreated. 'I hate, hate, hate talking about myself,' he warns. We are sitting in the immaculate boardroom of Ezintsha, the Wits-based medical research centre that Venter leads. Ezintsha came to international attention in 2019 after the results of a clinical trial called ADVANCE were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study showed the effectiveness of new HIV therapies and, perhaps more importantly, demonstrated why it is important that clinical trials be conducted in the contexts in which the drugs are mainly consumed. The therapies worked, but as Venter puts it, 'with complications peculiar to local populations, far from the sanitised world of curated pharmaceutical studies done on healthy white men.' Venter, by this time, was already well known for his work in HIV, not only for his scientific outputs but for taking up cudgels on behalf of people living with HIV. Venter's response to being singled out is predictable: 'There are so many people in the HIV world who did much more, and more bravely.' It is the refrain of many treatment activists, and it was no deterrent to my questions about his childhood in the Lowveld town of Phalaborwa. 'The town has a paint colour named after it – Phalaborwa Dust – a sort of dull grey, which says everything, really,' says Venter, who was born in 1969, the first of seven children. Venter's Afrikaans-speaking father worked as an accountant for the Palabora Mining Company, while his English mother ran a creche. 'You couldn't have a family that size today,' he says. 'They managed because the company subsidised everything from education to golf club memberships.' In a time of grand apartheid, Venter's world was particularly white and insular. 'Growing up, I never met a black person who wasn't a servant,' he admits. Supplied/Bhekisia 'I worked like crazy at school, knowing that was my ticket out of there,' says Venter, who worried his lowveld credentials would make him the odd man out at Wits medical school. 'Instead, I walked into this amazing diversity of people. For a boy who grew up on Springbok radio, it was more than I had dreamed of,' he says. Cancel language Venter is tall, powerfully built. The sharp edges of a forearm tattoo peek out of the sleeve of a black puffer jacket. His disposition is nervous, though, his speech often self-effacing, although mention one of his many bugbears and a quiet fury brims. Venter is known for speaking without any regard to 'self-preservation'. Like a good journalist, he calls it as he sees it. Supplied/Bhekisisa The comparison pleases Venter, who was editor of the campus newspaper, Wits Student, in 1991. The publication had been overtly political since depicting Prime Minister John Vorster in a butcher's outfit in 1973. 'I enjoyed the cut and thrust of the media, and understanding its place in political life,' says Venter, who credits journalism with making him a better HIV researcher and political organiser. He describes his involvement in student politics as an almost involuntary act, akin to staying afloat in a turbulent river. 'The late 80s were some of the worst for apartheid repression. Fellow students were being detained and tortured, their families maimed and disappeared. There was nowhere for a white person to hide, and joining the fight [against apartheid] was the only moral choice.' Medicine, in those first years, was at the edge of Venter's concerns. He maintains he was a 'mediocre student' although he pulled his socks up in his fifth year. Dying in Baragwanath Healthcare provided Venter with a clear view of the twistedness of apartheid policy. 'You go into the black hospitals and it's like, jeez, the things that are happening there. Meanwhile, white people are receiving world-class care,' says Venter, who did his 'house job' (residency) at Hillbrow Hospital, which is where he first encountered HIV as a student. 'It was the beginning of that incredible surge in numbers that occurred between 1993 and 1997. The first cases I saw were returning political exiles,' says Venter, who experienced an internal snap after an incident in a Yeoville restaurant. 'It was 1995. Rocky Street was still quite eclectic and happening, and I was hanging out in a restaurant run by this Caribbean guy I knew. He had booted out a young drug addict, who went across the street and bought a knife, came back and stabbed him in the heart. It was 10am. I tried to resuscitate him, but I had nothing. He bled to death in front of me, and I was like, f*ck South Africa and its trauma and violence.' Venter boarded a plane for the United Kingdom, and a hospital job he found 'terminally boring'. By 1997, he was back in Johannesburg, specialising in internal medicine. The HIV epidemic was at its zenith, and hospitals across the country were overwhelmed. 'In some of the hospitals, like Bara (Baragwanath Hospital), you just left patients in casualty, and they would die there and go out the door. 'In Joburg Gen (Johannesburg General Hospital, today Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital), you put them on the floor in the corridors, and they died there waiting for a bed. It was brutal,' says Venter. 'The numbers had surged with a suddenness and severity that we still don't really understand. Nelson Mandela was trying to prevent a race war. There really wasn't much that he, or anybody else, could have done. I didn't understand the transmission enough, and we didn't have the tools to prevent it.' Toxic - and incredibly effective On completion of his specialist time ,Venter was burnt out and unsure of what to do with his life. He was interested in HIV, sparked by his experience of looking after a haemophiliac in 1997. 'The patient was one of a group that had HIV after receiving infected blood imported from the US by the state in the 1980s. 'The apartheid government took a decision to pay for their treatment with what was then extremely expensive antiretroviral therapy (ART), and the ANC government continued this,' says Venter, who was amazed at the impact of the drugs on his patient. 'I saw this patient in ICU just come off a ventilator, which just did not happen in those days.' Venter was offered a job with the Wits-based Clinical HIV Research Unit by world-renowned HIV expert Ian Sanne, who, says Venter, 'taught me how to do clinical trials, how to play with these toxic, incredibly effective drugs, and it was really the first time I was able to start seeing myself as someone who was going to get involved in HIV. The drugs have evolved since then, now more effective with almost no side effects.' It was also where Venter started interacting with the NGOs and activists then taking the fight for affordable antiretroviral therapies to the government. The Treatment Action Campaign had started smuggling them into the country. 'It was devastating, though, watching them fighting our government to even acknowledge HIV existed, while their members died needing those drugs. The hypocrisy of senior political figures, many of whom had family members on ARVs (antiretrovirals) I was treating, yet didn't call out Mbeki, is unforgivable.' He then joined Professor Helen Rees' Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Initiative and began working out of Esselen Street Clinic, an old Hillbrow facility home to the first South African HIV testing site, and from where he ran a huge US government-funded HIV support programme for the next decade across several provinces, gaining experience in expanding primary care approaches in chronic diseases. Sponsored by Since those heady Esselen days, many important clinical trials, HIV programmes, research papers and court cases have gone under the bridge, and Venter has become part of the moral conscience of South Africa. For years, Ezintsha was based in a Yeoville house and Hillbrow back rooms, around which sewage spills split and foamed. Now, it occupies two floors of a large office block in Parktown, an environment of biometric access controls and curvilinear glass, employing 150 people. On the upper floor is the Sleep Clinic, where patients with suspected sleep disorders lie back on R50 000 mattresses sponsored by the company. READ | Struggling with a sleep disorder? First-of-its-kind sleep clinic launched in Johannesburg 'The quid pro quo is that they be allowed to advertise,' says a faintly apologetic Venter. The Sleep Clinic also houses a new obesity clinic, where Venter sees patients with South Africa's new pandemic. 'The new drugs for obesity are every bit as revolutionary as the HIV drugs,' he says, 'but every bit as fiddly as antiretrovirals were in 2000'. New studies, using these wonder drugs in people with both HIV and obesity, are being hatched here to try to improve primary care for diabetes, hypertension and other common diseases in South Africa. The race to the bottom The transit away from the streets into cushy offices is one that many organisations working on HIV have made in recent years. 'It is nice not to have to worry about staff being pistol-whipped while at work,' remarks Venter, but donor funding, while key to the fight against HIV in South Africa, has also distanced organisations from communities, and created a dependency which, following the collapse of the US government's Aids fund, Pepfar, and the United States International Agency for International Development, USAID, threatens catastrophe. READ | How the health department will deal with Pepfar's near collapse 'What happened still feels quite unthinkable. It is extremely frustrating that our systems have not been made sustainable and are now on the brink of collapse as a result of Pepfar having been interwoven with the national HIV programme to such an extent everything unravels when it is stopped.' Venter sketches a scenario, in which South Africa's HIV response – 'the one effective programme we have' – is misleadingly characterised as 'too expensive', and dragged down to the lowest common denominator, 'leading to the same terrible outcomes you find in crap programmes, like diabetes'. 'A race to the bottom, in other words,' says Venter. 'We have poor indicators for almost every health metric outside of HIV, TB and vaccines, and even those are now slipping, due to the health department dropping the ball. 'Both our public and private health services are an expensive mess, for very different reasons. The health minister has been in charge for most of the last 17 years, we have endless excellent white papers and policy documents that gather dust, and little to show for the continent's most expensive health system.' Will this grim scenario prevail, or will South African healthcare be shepherded through the labyrinth of budget cuts and misfiring systems? Venter doesn't see why not. Venter says: Our problems are systemic, and we have enough resources and brains to fix them. He pauses to mull the judiciousness of his next point. 'I'll tell you what you do. You take the top people from the medical aids and tell them: You can't be head of Discovery or the Government Employee Medical Scheme, Gems, anymore, lead with the best people from academia, from government, the private sector, donors, civil society, form a focused group with teeth, and run the health system. 'We all declare our interests, put an end to corruption, and everyone from the president and the minister of health down in government must use the public healthcare system when using their medical aid. If they experience the system first-hand, they will have an immediate investment in assisting those fixing it. 'Start using the innovations South Africans are world leaders in, including data systems. If we do that, I am telling you we will fix the system in five years.' Venter, clearly, has already rolled up his sleeves for this new fight. It will be interesting to see who joins him.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
A new 'interstellar visitor' has entered the solar system. Astronomers aren't sure what it is.
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have spotted what they think might be an "interstellar object" hurtling through the solar system — and it's headed toward us. The visiting space object, potentially the third of its kind ever seen, will make its closest approach to the sun in around four months, before eventually leaving our cosmic neighborhood forever. The newly discovered object, currently dubbed A11pl3Z, was first spotted in data collected between June 25 and June 29 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which automatically scans the night sky using telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa. The mystery object was confirmed by both NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies and the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center on Tuesday (July 1), according to A11pl3Z is most likely a large asteroid, or maybe a comet, potentially spanning up to 12 miles (20 kilometers). It is traveling toward the inner solar system at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km/h) and is approaching us from the part of the night sky where the bar of the Milky Way is located. Based on A11pl3Z's speed and trajectory, experts think it originated from beyond the sun's gravitational influence and has enough momentum to shoot straight through our cosmic neighborhood without slowing down. However, more observations are needed to tell for sure. Until now, only two confirmed interstellar visitors have ever been spotted: Comet 2I/Borisov, which was seen sailing through the solar system in 2019; and 'Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that made headlines in 2017 when some astronomers argued it was potentially an alien probe, before experts showed it was most likely a hydrogen-spewing space rock. But scientists have long suspected that many more interstellar interlopers likely pass through our cosmic neighborhood without ever being detected. Related: 1 million 'interstellar objects' — each larger than the Statue of Liberty — may lurk in the outer solar system A11pl3Z is currently around 3.8 times as far from the sun as Earth is. Its first close approach to a planet will be on Oct. 3, when it comes relatively close to Mars. Shortly afterward, it will reach its closest point to the sun, or perihelion, on Oct. 23, coming within two Earth-sun distances of our home star, according to Universe Today. Earth will be on the opposite side of the sun as A11pl3Z during the object's solar flyby, so it will pose no risk to our planet. The object will likely make its closest approach to Earth in December, on its journey back out of the solar system. Researchers will continue to study the object in the coming weeks and months to learn more about its size, shape and origins. And, compared with when the previous interstellar objects passed by, we now have better ways of tracking and imaging the mysterious space rock. RELATED STORIES —An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal —Scientists want to build an 'interstellar interceptor' to play hide-and-seek with the next 'Oumuamua —An interstellar visitor may have changed the course of 4 solar system planets, study suggests For example, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory — the world's most powerful optical telescope, which recently released its first images — will likely be fully operational by the time A11pl3Z is closest to us, and the telescope is exceptionally good at spotting moving objects, like asteroids. Some researchers have also proposed using NASA's Mars rovers to photograph the object as it flies close to the Red Planet. Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard University who first proposed that 'Oumuamua might be an alien probe, has additionally suggested using the James Webb Space Telescope to search for signs of "non-gravitational acceleration" — indicating, perhaps, some kind of artificial propulsion system — in A11pl3Z, via a post on Medium.
Gizmodo
15 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Meet A11pl3Z, a Possible Third-Known Interstellar Visitor Whizzing Through Our Solar System
Astronomers are scrambling to gather data on a mysterious object that's currently hurtling through the solar system. Preliminary observations suggest it came from interstellar space, and if confirmed, it would mark the third discovery of an interstellar object in history. The cosmic visitor—tentatively named A11pl3Z—first appeared in data collected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) between June 25 and 29, Universe Today reports. ATLAS uses telescopes in Chile, South Africa, and Hawaii to scan the skies multiple times a night in search of moving objects. ATLAS spotted A11pl3Z again on Tuesday, July 1, and by Wednesday, the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, had detected it, too. These early observations suggest the dim object is likely a large asteroid or comet—potentially 12 miles (20 kilometers) wide—that is traveling toward the inner solar system at roughly 152,000 miles per hour (245,000 kilometers per hour), according to EarthSky. It appears to be approaching from the Milky Way's galactic disk. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center added the object to its near-Earth object confirmation list on Tuesday, July 1. This means astronomers need further observations to confirm that it is, in fact, a new near-Earth object. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has also added A11pl3Z to its near-Earth object confirmation page. Though it's too soon to say anything for certain about this visitor, early estimations of its speed and trajectory suggest that it came from outside the solar system and has enough momentum to shoot through it without slowing down. But don't worry, A11pl3Z has no chance of hitting Earth or even coming that close to us. 'Astronomers may have just discovered the third interstellar object passing through the Solar System!' the European Space Agency's Operations account shared on Bluesky early Wednesday. 'ESA's Planetary Defenders are observing the object, provisionally known as #A11pl3Z, right now using telescopes around the world.' Until now, astronomers had only spotted two confirmed interstellar objects. The first was 'Oumuamua, a small, cigar-shaped object that visited our solar system in 2017. Its true nature is still up for debate, though some experts believe it was a comet. The second was a comet called Comet 2I/Borisov that streaked through our cosmic neighborhood in 2019. Discovering an interstellar object offers astronomers an extremely rare chance to learn about other star systems by observing their remnants as they pass by. While these objects are likely natural phenomena, that hasn't stopped people from speculating that they are extraterrestrial probes. A11pl3Z is currently about 3.8 astronomical units (au) from Earth, according to Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard University. One astronomical unit is equal to the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. On October 3, it should make a close approach to Mars, coming within just 0.2 au of the Red Planet, Universe Today reports. This may be close enough for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to detect it. A11pl3Z should make its closest approach to the Sun on October 29 and its closest approach to Earth on October 30, both at a distance of 1.35 au. The object will be traveling outbound at roughly 61 miles per second (98 kilometers per second), according to Universe Today. By then, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which recently released its first findings, should be able to gather data on A11pl3Z. In just 10 hours of test observations, this powerful telescope discovered more than 2,000 new asteroids. The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to catch a glimpse of this object, too. As astronomers learn about these strange outsiders, the universe beyond our solar system becomes less mysterious—but all the more captivating.
