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pasture grass at the edge of the plateau and hiding in the wadi steep slope. A valuable fodder plant and a perennial Crucifer with fleshy leaves, Moricandia nitens is likewise all around and gets as tall as 1.5 meter on top of the cliff of Wadi Abu Grouf. Dr Gamal Sami Mikhael and Mr Taher Kassr (MRMP range scientist and extensionist) have collected Moricandia seeds and will grow them in the MRMP nursery for propagation on some of the new range sites, where parts of the slope below the plateau are being rehabilitated as the useful grazing land that they used to be in the past.
An interesting find by the author was a wealth of Globularia alypum, a woody and Bonsai-like shrub with pretty globe-shaped blue flowers. This is exciting because this Globularia is usually a forest companion species of Pinus halepensis, the Aleppo pine; this is, after all, found not far away on the magnificent coast of the Libyan Marmarica, but under much more favorable rainfall conditions. Was it here too once? A careful search near Matrouh reveals a few Roman kilns and tons of pottery shards along the plateau cliff and in the wadis. There must have been a lot of fuel wood in the area to allow all this pottery to be produced.
The day before, the Range group had roamed Wadi Remel (the sandy wadi) just 15 km south of Matrouh. They found plenty of
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fodder shrub), and more!
We really had not expected such a rich and diverse flora in a desert-like environment. This prompted Dr Le Houérou and the author to suggest to the local authorities that some wadi tips be classified as Natural Reserve Areas: a small investment, but a valuable one for the future of biodiversity in Egypt.
Regeneration of much of this biodiversity can lead to real opportunities for those who are trying to rehabilitate degraded land in harsh, marginal environments. And a study of these plants in situ can help us understand how ancient cultures achieved a good living from this land, probably with very little more rainfall than we have now. A good example was the discovery of an unusual wild pea in the low-rainfall zone of Syria last year (see Caravan No. 6), an intriguing clue as to how large Greek, Roman and Byzantine cities supported themselves in what is now virtually desert.
The remarkable wadi tips of Egypt's North-West Coast should not be seen as a plant museum, but as a blueprint for the future. Let us preserve them.
Dr Gustave Gintzburger is Range
Specialist, ICARDA.
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