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Orothamnus zeyheri
Also called Mountain Rose
Orothamnus zeyheri, the marsh rose, is a rare, endangered fynbos shrub from the Western Cape of South Africa, the only species in its genus. It is grown only by specialist collectors, and it needs cool, moist, well-drained conditions and fire-cued seed to germinate.
Orothamnus (Greek 'oros' mountain, 'thamnos' bush) or marsh rose is a monotypic fynbos genus in the family Proteaceae occurring in the Kogelberg and Kleinrivier Mountains of Hottentots-Holland in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. It is an erect, sparsely branched shrub to 5 m (16 ft) tall and was first depicted by Jean Villet, a Capetonian artist and dealer in natural history specimens, in Curtis's Botanical Magazine 74: plate 4357 in 1848.
Orothamnus zeyheri (after the botanist Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher) is extremely rare and endangered and appears on CITES Appendix I. The plants are short-lived, with an average lifespan of 10 years and a maximum of 20 years, and are readily killed by fire. The seeds, on the other hand, are long-lived and remain viable for over 35 years below ground, where they are deposited by ants, and paradoxically need summer fires to germinate.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Orothamnus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
