Tagged: biodiversity
Rooibos Bushes Keep Turning Up Insects Without Names
Between 2020 and 2022, three leafhoppers new to science were collected on cultivated rooibos and described for the first time: Geelus dundraad, Colistra acapitatus and Colistra bucapitatus. None of the three does the plant any harm.
More of the Cederberg Is Under a Conservation Pact Than Under Rooibos
Rooibos farms in the Cederberg have signed more land into formal conservation agreements than the entire industry cultivates, a corridor that also keeps a camera-trapped leopard population, a dying cedar, and the plant's own wild backup moving.
Fynbos
Fynbos is the fine-leaved shrubland that covers South Africa's southwestern Cape, one of the six floral kingdoms of the world and the ground rooibos calls home. What the shrubland is made of, why fire keeps it alive, how rooibos's own trick of soil chemistry fits it for the ground, and the protection and the threats the whole system now lives under.
The Sustainability of Rooibos
Sustainability in rooibos is four subjects rather than one: the fynbos the crop is planted on, the wild plant that still grows unfarmed above it, the certification marks that each promise something different, and the question of who owns the land and who receives the money. This is the canonical account of all four, with the figures each of them rests on.