''Orothamnus'' (Greek 'oros' mountain, 'thamnos' bush) or marsh rose is a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

fynbos Fynbos (; meaning fine plants) is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly coastal and mountainous, with a Mediterranean clim ...

genus in the family

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...

occurring in the Kogelberg and Kleinrivier Mountains of

Hottentots-Holland The Hottentots Holland Mountains are part of the Cape Fold Belt in the Western Cape, South Africa. The mountain range forms a barrier between the Cape Town metropolitan area and the southern Overberg coast. The range is primarily composed of Ta ...

in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

Province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. It is an erect, sparsely branched shrub to 5 m tall and was first depicted by Jean Villet, a Capetonian artist and dealer in natural history specimens, in

Curtis's Botanical Magazine ''The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed'', is an illustrated publication which began in 1787. The longest running botanical magazine, it is widely referred to by the subsequent name ''Curtis's Botanical Magazine''. Each of the issue ...

74: plate 4357 in 1848. ''Orothamnus zeyheri'' (after the botanist

Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher (2 August 1799 Dillenburg, Hessen, Germany – 13 December 1858 Cape Town), was a botanical and insect collector who collected extensively in South Africa. He was the author, with Christian Friedrich Ecklon, of ''Enumer ...

) is extremely rare and endangered and appears on

CITES CITES (shorter name for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of interna ...

Appendix I. The plants are short-lived, with an average lifespan of 10 years and a maximum of 20 years, and are readily killed by fire. The seeds, on the other hand, are long-lived and remain viable for over 35 years below ground, where they are deposited by ants, and paradoxically need summer fires to germinate. The pollinating agent is not known. Marsh Roses grow in peaty swamps and seeps at altitudes of 450–850 m. Seeds germinating at other times, suffer from low germination rates and predation by Saunders' Vlei Rat ''

Otomys African vlei rats (''Otomys''), also known as groove-toothed rats, live in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Most species live in marshlands, grasslands, and similar habitats and feed on the vegetation of such areas, occasionally supplementing ...

saundersiae'', and if the soil around the plant is disturbed or trampled, then the fungus ''

Phytophthora ''Phytophthora'' (from Greek language, Greek (''phytón''), "plant" and (), "destruction"; "the plant-destroyer") is a genus of plant-damaging oomycetes (water molds), whose member species are capable of causing enormous economic losses on cro ...

'' causes death. Successful grafting onto ''

Leucospermum ''Leucospermum'' is a genus of evergreen upright, sometimes creeping shrubs that is assigned to the Proteaceae, with currently forty-eight known species. Almost all species are easily recognised as ''Leucospermum'' because of the long protrudin ...

'' rootstock, has given renewed hope that the species may yet be saved from extinction.

References and links

Protea Atlas ProjectCITES amendmentsKogelberg Nature Reserve
*Boucher, C.; McCann, G.D. The Orothamnus saga. ''Veld and Flora'' 61: 2–5; 1975. Proteaceae Endemic flora of South Africa Monotypic Proteaceae genera Flora of the Cape Provinces {{Proteaceae-stub