NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDENS OF SOUTH AFRICA

also called Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, one of the world's largest botanical gardens, occupying a 1,336 acre (526-hectare) site in Kirstenbosch, near Cape Town, Western Cape province, S.Af. The 6,200-species collection consists almost exclusively of plants native to southern Africa. The botanic garden was established in 1913. It includes such beautiful flowering plants as the protea and heather, an enormous number of flowering bulbs, and immense cycads (palmlike tropical plants). The gardens have 11 greenhouses that are used chiefly for propagation and for rare plants, but not for public display. Three herbaria, with a total of about 300,000 specimens, are retained at Kirstenbosch. One of the main objectives of the National Botanic Gardens is to preserve endangered local plant species. Over the years the institution has acquired property in areas that have numerous specimens of plants that are in danger of becoming extinct. It has set aside at least six such sites throughout South Africa as regional gardens or reserves. Karoo Botanic Garden at Worcester, for example, maintains more than 5,000 varieties comprising mostly South African succulents, and the Edith Stephens Cape Flats Flora Reserve specializes in flowering bulbs of the iris and lily families.