Cape Town - The Cape water lily, locally extinct for around 75 years, have been replanted as a symbolic gesture in celebration of Earthshot Week held for the very first time on the African continent.
Planting of the Cape water lily (Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea) by Mayor Geordin-Hill Lewis, Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews, and the City’s biodiversity branch, took place at the Rondevlei section of the False Bay Nature Reserve, yesterday.
The lily was commonly observed in lowland wetlands on the Cape Flats until the mid-1900s.
Deputy chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands, Waterways and the Coastal Environment, Alex Lansdowne, shared how there were images of the water lily in the Cape Flats, and that it’s been extinct on the Cape Flats for 75, almost 100 years, due to habitat loss, pollution, and historical harvesting for the cut flower trade.
“We talk a lot in Cape Town about a City of Hope, that’s the overarching vision of this administration and whilst that may be not very tangible, symbols are a really great way to show hope.
“So for me today, the symbol of restoring this Nymphaea to the Cape Flats, to Cape Town, not only represents our commitment to wetland and water conservation in our City, but is probably also one of the most tangible ways in which we can use ecological restoration as a tool for environmental and spatial justice and redress in the City.
“Because my grandparents and the generations of people that have gone, that lived in this place, in this area, would have known and had these memories of the Nymphaea.
“Those memories have gone extinct as they passed away and now we’re able to plant these water lilies here today and future generations of Capetonians hopefully, that will be around long after we have left this earth, will actually be able to come and see the water lily on the Cape Flats, once again.”
Several of the water lilies were sourced from the Helderberg and reintroduced at the reserve.
Hill-Lewis said: “In one way it makes me profoundly sad to hear of how residents of the Cape Flats in Cape Town would come here, 70 years ago and see sheets of these beautiful blue water lilies. But another part of it makes me profoundly hopeful and energised because what we are doing today shows that nature can be restored, and it can be repaired and we can one day, envisage a future in which young, little Capetonians, maybe not immediately, but certainly in the years ahead, can come and see sheets of this beautiful blue water lily again. This is symbolic of what Earthshot is actually trying to do in the world.”
The annual Earthshot Prize, founded by Prince William of Wales, seeks out persons/ organisations to support and scale-up their innovative solutions to addressing some of the environment’s most pressing challenges, with an overall goal of repairing and restoring the earth.
Sidney Jacobs, chairperson of the Friends of Zeekoevlei and Rondevlei said: “So the issue of us being a City of hope is brought up like this, it’s hope. That’s what it’s all about.”
Cape Argus