Table Mountain

Table Mountain, mountain overlooking Cape Town, South Africa. It is a distinctive flat-topped mountain 1,086 m (3,563 ft) high, flanked by Lion’s Head (669 m/2,195 ft) to the north-west and Devil’s Peak (1,001 m/3,284 ft) to the east. One of the world’s most famous landmarks, Table Mountain provides a dramatic setting for the harbour and city of Cape Town. Its northern face is a sheer precipice 3 km (2 mi) long, broken only by the deep cleft of Platteklip gorge. The top 600 m (2,000 ft) is formed of horizontal layers of sandstone, deposited on the floor of a shallow sea between 400 million and 500 million years ago, resting on a foundation of slates and granites.

The mountain is covered in fynbos—a major vegetation type unique to South Africa that includes proteas, ericas, and plants found nowhere else. A large variety of wildflowers blooms on the mountain, including Disa uniflora, a species of orchid known as the Pride of Table Mountain. The mountain top is rocky and treeless. Animal life includes baboons, dassies (the rock hyrax), and also Himalayan mountain goats descended from animals that escaped from the nearby Groote Schuur Zoo.

In summer a strangely neat cap of cloud often unrolls across the flat summit and drapes itself over the edges, forming a “tablecloth”. When Cape Town’s strong south-easterly winds collide with the mountains of the Cape Peninsula they are forced to rise. As soon as they reach the cooler altitudes of the mountaintops they condense into thick white clouds.

The National Botanical Gardens (1913) at Kirstenbosch on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain were originally a gift from Cecil Rhodes to the nation in 1895. About 9,000 of the 21,000 southern African flowering plants are cultivated in the 560-hectare (1,400-acre) garden. A cable car, built in 1929, takes visitors to the summit. It is used by over 300,000 passengers each year. There are also 350 recognized paths to the top.