A 200-year mystery has been solved after the plant Prismatocarpus fastigiatus was seen in bloom in an area in the Northern Cape that had recently burned.
- A rare plant called Prismatocarpus fastigiatus has been spotted 195 years after last being seen by a German horticulturist in 1830.
- The discovery took place after a local biodiversity officer saw a flower in bloom in an area that was recently burned and posted it to the social network iNaturalist.
- Experts hope a proper assessment of the flower’s conservation status can begin and the plant can be protected.
A biodiversity officer from the Northern Cape has given the botany world a new-year suprise after recently rediscovering a long-lost plant which was believed to be extinct for close to 200 years.
JP le Roux stumbled upon the plant, Prismatocarpus fastigiatus, on a site about 12km south of the town of Nieuwoudtville on the Bokkeveld Plateau.
He posted the picture to iNaturalist, an online biodiversity social network, and it is here that fellow botanists were able to identify the “missing” plant, which they believed was either exceedingly rare or extinct.
Research into reasons as to why the plant could not be found for a long time suggests that botanists were searching in the wrong place.
Le Roux made the discovery while in the field during a general search near the Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve in the Northern Cape. The plant was originally thought to exist in Caledon and Bredasdorp in the Western Cape.
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“At this time of year, it’s quite unusual to find anything in flower, so when I came across this plant, it immediately caught my attention as something out of the ordinary,” Le Roux said, adding he was on the lookout for unusual plants after the area burned in 2024.
“I took photographs and uploaded the observation to iNaturalist, which is something I routinely do whenever I’m in the field,” he said.
He added his aim was to collect as much biodiversity data as possible and make the most out of every field trip, even when his primary focus was on something else.
“That observation then helped spark further discussion and investigation, which ultimately led to the identification of the plant as P. fastigiatus.”
JP le Roux found the long-lost ‘Prismatocarpus fastigiatus’ (not pictured) after searching for a different type of plant species.
Supplied/WWF South Africa
Amateur botanist De Waal Hugo, who has a special interest in this family, has also been on the trail of the “missing” plant.
Hugo told Le Roux in an email that he suspected the location of the plant had been incorrectly captured.
“It was immensely fortunate that you [found] the plants in flower and confirm[ed] the theory,” he wrote.
“Hopefully, a proper assessment of the conservation status can now be undertaken and the plant appropriately protected. It is quite possibly still rare in an area that has seen a lot of habitat loss.”
The plant belongs to the Campanulaceae bellflower family.
Supplied/WWF South Africa
The search for the missing flower was made possible by funding from the WWF-Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Trust.
The Prismatocarpus fastigiatus is not the only plant that has recently been rediscovered. The rare Erica cunoniensis plant was rediscovered in 2025 after many feared it had been extinct for almost 40 years.
In 2019, the Psoralea cataracta was discovered by a UCT botany PhD student after he accidentally came across it.
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Kuhle Tshabalala
www.news24.com
