ABSTRACT
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, botanists in South Africa’s Western Cape felt hard-pressed to popularize and protect the unique indigenous Fynbos flora of the region. They saw themselves ranged against the extensive transformations of the landscape being undertaken by farmers and foresters, the expansion of urban areas and infrastructure, and the depredations of flower pickers. The introduction of a suite of invasive alien plants into the region in the 19th century, notably a range of Australian species well suited to the poor nutrients and rainfall and fire regimes of the region, presented a physical but also a symbolic focus for their advocacy. In the early 20th century this was played out in the context of political attempts to build unity among the English and Afrikaner populations after the South African War ended in 1902. The new science of ecology was consciously used as an integrative influence. However, the ecological theory imported with the experts arriving from Britain in the period of reconstruction, as influential a biological invasion as the earlier wave of alien plant imports, had unfortunate consequences for scientifically informed research and management of the local flora.
