The fynbos biome of southern Africa is floristically diverse and explanations of this diversity have frequently invoked historical processes, in particular environmental change. Few sites exist within the region which facilitate palaeoecological reconstructions, but a relatively deep sequence of organic sediments in the Cederberg mountains in the south-western Cape Province of South Africa has been analysed for fossil pollen content. Conventional zonation of the resultant absolute pollen diagram reveals an apparent absence of marked vegetation change during the last 14500 years. Pollen analysis has its limitations under circumstances where the high plant diversity and incompleteness of reference material entails that pollen identifications may usually be made only down to family level. In order to assess whether the presumed stability of vegetation communities during the late Pleistocene and Holocene is an artefact of these taxonomic limitations, a comprehensive contemporary pollen sampling programme was conducted. Multiple discriminant analysis was applied to the contemporary data and suggests that contemporary pollen spectra are accurate reflections of the surrounding vegetation. Discriminant analysis is further able to identify analogue communities prevailing at various times during the sedimentation period. Rather than being truly stable, the vegetation of these mountains is shown to have been dynamic in response to changes in precipitation inputs, fire regime and human activity. Nevertheless, the vegetation history is characterised by relatively subtle changes in plant community patterns, a fact which may have played an important role in the evolution of prolific species diversity. It is concluded that contemporary pollen rain studies, combined with multiple discriminant analysis, may be especially valuable interpretive tools in situations of high plant species richness.