Harry Mays

Editor, Alsterworthia International

Woodsleigh, Moss Lane, St Michaels on Wyre, Preston, PR3 0TY, UK

hmays@freenetname.co.uk

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Watercolors painted by Gerhard Marx in 2003 of photos taken by Lawrence Loucka while on field trip in October 2002.

From the collection of David Martin.

De Hoop Nature Reserve Bredasdorp
reservation office Tel: +27 28 425 5020 Fax: +27 28 425 5030
Email: bredasdorp@capenature.co.za http://www.capenature.org.za/index.php?fSectionId=81

Kweekkraal Guest Farm Riversdale
Tel: ++27 28 713 2679 Cell: 082-458 8454
Email: info@kweekkraal.com
http://www.kweekkraal.com

Monday 7 October: Kweekkraal - Heidelberg - Swellendam - Bredasdorp - Napier - Caledon - Cape Town

The Commodore
Portswood Road, Waterfront Cape Town 8001
Tel: +27 (0) 21 415 1000 Fax: +27 (0) 21 415 1100/77
Email: commodore@legacyhotels.co.za
http://www.legacyhotel.co.za

Port Wine Guest House
Calitzdorp
Tel: ++27 44 213 3131
groenfontein@iafrica.com
http://www.portwine.net

Zandvlakte Guest House - Baviaanskloof
Tel: ++27 49 839 1002  Fax: ++27 49 839 1182
info@baviaanskloof.com
http://www.baviaanskloof.com/

Super Tubes Guest House
Jeffrey’s Bay
Tel: ++27 42 293 2957
info@supertubesguesthouse.co.za
http://www.supertubesguesthouse.co.za/

Leaving Grahamstown behind we went west to Swartwaterspoort, but due to river erosion the road through the poort was impassable. We then went up and over the Zuurber Pass. Just south of Ann’s Villa we can upon Haworthia aristata and at the top of the pass are fields of Haworthia glauca. 
 

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Addo Elephant National Park
PO Box 52 Addo, 6105
Tel: +27 (0)21 552 0008
reservations@sanparks.org
http://www.addoelephantpark.com

Just outside of Port Elizabeth is Motherwell where the miniture Aloe bowiea (syn: Chamaeloe bowiea) is ever more threatened by urban sprawl. This plant is considered endanged due to its limited range and habitat distruction. Development of a new ocean port at Coega is likely to disrupt ever more of this unique area. Also in the area of flat lands and scrub brush are a number of medusoid Euphorbias that Gerhard is fond of (Euphorbia meloformis, E. gorgonis, E. stellata, E. globosa, E. clava, E. ledienii, E. polygona), and also some Gasteria bicolor, and several species of Aloe.

Near by we found Haworthia arachnoidea var. xiphiophylla growing in large numbers.

At Kariega River Horseshoe we found large clumps of Hawortha cymbiformis and Haworthia coartctata growing right along side of the road. The cymbiformis growing on the cliff face seem to get a lot of wind coming up from the river valley.

At Charlwood, west of Kasouga Crossing, near Port Alfred we made a visit with the mysterious and hairy Haworthia cooperi var. venusta. As far as I know this and another population near by are the only locations for this variety. With all of the people who know it’s whereabouts I hope it doesn’t get collected out. At Bloukrans, north of Bathurst we took a look at the very large growing Gasteria excelsa.

While in Grahamstown Gretchen and I stayed at a bed and breakfast on Henry Street, near the center of town and Rhodes University. The historic home and has been beautifully restored to its original English Settler style. The back gradens were very beautiful. Our hosts, with Pip and Nan Townshend were warm and made us feel very welcomed.

Arthur’s Seat 6 Henry Street, Grahamstown, 6139 Tel/Fax : 046 622 7516 Cell : 072 341 7027Email: townshend@telkomsa.net Website: www.grahamstown.co.za/arthursseat

Monday 30 September: Grahamstown - Glen Craig - Ecca Pass - Fort Brown - Hell’s Poort - Dikkop Flats - Willow Fountain - Riebeeck East - Grahamstown

The next day we took a loop west and north of Grahamstown. Some 23 km east of Grahamstown toward Peddie we found Hawothia angustifolia. This would be as far east as we would go for the rest of the tour. Coming back west we stopped at Govenour’s Kloof and took a look at Haworthia cymbiformis growing on the cliff side. Next stop was Glen Craig, north of Grahamstown on the way to Ecca Pass. Here the Haworthia cooperi var. pilifera where just starting to come up out of the hard pack mud, near by we found Haworthia gracilis.

After numerous lonely solo scavaging treks my daughter Gretchen and I joined a group tour with Kotie Retif, Gerhard Marx, Harry Mays, Mary Stone, and Dr. Hayashi for ten days in the Eastern and Western Cape in late September 2002. Botanical guide for the trip was Gerhard Marx, devoted student of the succulents of the area. Gerhard lived in Grahamstown for many years and has studied the succulent flora of the Eastern Cape and the Little Karoo extensively, and has a passion for the area.

Wednesday 25 September we departed New Britain (Bradley Hartford) for Atlanta and Capetown. Flight to Cape Town left Atlanta 3 hours late. Felt like a nursery room with kids whining the whole time – one poor woman with 3 in diapers all by herself. Seats too close, closer than before. On Demand Video is an improvement. Relatively painless flight, slept maybe 5 hours of the 14 despite the kids and the folks behind me banging my seat every time they got up.

Drove up to the Table Mountain cableway, too crowded, so Gretchen and I drove around to Camps Bay and then back to Sea Point. A relaxing first day. Winchester Mansions under construction – noisy during the day, lovely rooms. Sushi for lunch at Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Italian at Hildebrands for dinner. Went to see the seals sleeping on the docks – sea dogs.

Friday, slept late, slept well. Foggy morning drive to Cape Point. (Friends Kobus on vacation to Rictersveld, and Bruce in Kwazulu Natal). We saw penguin at Boulders in Simonstown. Then at Cape of Good Hope we saw baboon, collected sponges, but didn’t see any marine mammals except a seal carcass. Later that night we had a nice fish dinner at Cape Town Fish Market at the Victoria and Alfred Mall.

Winchester Mansions Beach Road, Sea Point Tel: ++27 21 434 2351 sales@winchester.co.za http://www.kapstadt.de/winchester/

Saturday 28 September flew from Capetown to Port Elizabeth

Flight to PE was uneventful, weather overcast. Drove to Gamtoos River and found Haworthia on the cliffs near the bridge – long thin toothed things. Drove on to Gamtoosriviermond – rustic, quiet, wonder why it’s not more developed. Drove RT102 and RT75 back to PE through Uitenhage, had lunch, then took a hike in the Baakens River Valley to see the cymbiformis.

Got to Lemon Tree Lane Guest House around 3:30. Harry Mays arrived at 5:30. Return the car at 6:45 and then to dinner with the group for the first time. Surprise, Dr. Hiashi joined the trip in place of Kanoh Kazumi.

Lemon Tree Lane Guest House Port Elizabeth Tel: ++27 41 373 4103 Fax: ++27 41 373 1015 lemontree@intekom.co.za http://www.lemontreelane.co.za

South Africa - January 2001

4th trip to Port Elizabeth - Grahamstown area in 2000/2001. January 8 to 16, 2001Reed Valley - Tyolomnqa River Bridge west of East London along R72 found the tiny hairy Haworthia again.
Drove the dirts roads between Southwell, Bathurst, & Alexandria looking for rocky ridges along the several rivers that run through - the Kowie, Bushmans.Grahamstown - Hellspoort, no one home at the farm at the northern end of the poort, so didn’t hop any fences. A wonderful place with lots of interesting crassula and mesembs. Spent the afternoon at the beach at Port Alfred befor heading back to Grahamstown and north again to Fort Brown.

Bucklands

Buckland Farm - searched for Haworthia Lepida at Kwandwe (The Fort) along the Groot Vish Rivier. Didn’t find any haworthia but did find Astroloba, Aloe, and Gasteria. We saw zebra, impala, wildebeest, springbok. And a awful infestation of Opuntia growig on the cliffs of the Great Fish River.

Kwandwe was just a run down collection of farms to the west of the national road and south of the Great Fish River, Now it is an exclusive private game reserve. Can’t go walking were Lynn Phillips and I went because there are lion, and rhino there now. Whatever Haworthia grow there are now safe from development, farming, and poachers. Too bad I wasn’t able to locate anything remotely like the Haworthia lepida we have in our collections.

Valley View B&B in Addo on Sundays River. Paardepoort, Jansenville, Stytlerville, and rain. Then back to PE for the flight to Cape Town and on to the States.

My 3rd trip to the Port Elizabeth - Grahamstown area in 2000 started with a visit to Hannelie van der Merwe and her Shamwari Succulents.

Some Shamwari Succulents

Most people go to Shamwari to view the game or relax in luxury. I went hunting succulent plants. The Shamwari Game Reserve is located at the western end of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown just northeast of the N2 and N10 junction, an easy hour’s drive from the Port Elizabeth airport. The reserve is quite large at 45,000 acres or some 70 square miles.

I met Hannelie van der Merwe first through email after having posted a notice on one of the on-line plant discussion groups asking for suggestions on places to stay in the Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown area. Hannelie sent me an email and introduced herself andtold me all about where she lives and works, Shamwari. Hannelie is a conservation wildlife assistant for Shamwari’s student wildlife management and education program. In August 2000 I made my way back to South Africa and met Hannelie at Shamwari, she wanted to show me her Shamwari Haworthia! Then in November I visited Hannelie again, this time to look at another Haworthia that she had recently discovered.

So far we’ve botanized four sites in the reserve. In August we took a walk along a dry section of Bushman’s River and up a ridge to find Haworthia coarctata, next we drove to an exposed bank to find Aloe humilis and Faucaria felina. Then in November we went in search of Haworthia cooperi at two sites, one near a water hole, the second high up on a ridge with a wonderful view of the savannah below.

I’m very fortunate to have made such a good friend, very few Shamwari guests get to walk around the reserve.

Haworthia coarctata is a beautiful plant. It is surprising that it’s not found more often in gardens as it can spread slowly and makes nice mats. The name coarctata means ‘leaves pressed together’. This species is found west of the Fish River north of Grahamstown over to near Port Elizabeth. It is often confused with Haworthia reinwardtii which is found further to the east. Coarctata leaves tend to be thicker and less densely packed around the stem. Both species have tubercles on the leaf surfaces. Reinwardtii tubercles tend to be larger, flatter, and whiter than coarctata’s.There is a lot of variation between populations and habitats. Plants from near Salem have many more tubercles. Plants near Howiesonspoort have almost none. Plants in full sun get red and purplish, while plants in deep shade remain green as can be seen here.

Notice the Sansevieria next to the coarctata in the fourth picture below, another interesting Shamwari succulent.

Amongst the numerous genera of the Mesembryanthemum the Faucaria are distinctive and easily recognized. The name Faucaria comes from the Latin faux, meaning ‘jaw’, and faucaria means a collection of jaws. With a little imagination the toothed edges of the opposing leaves give the appearance of an animal’s open jaws. Faucaria felina is one of six varieties and is wide spread in the western parts of Eastern Cape, distributed between Oudtshoorn, Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Bedford, Grahamstown, and Port Elizabeth. They are found in open Grassland, Karoo and Valley Bushveld vegetation, in generally flat terrain, on north facing foothills, in gravel and sand between stones on slopes.

Aloe humilis is a dwarf aloe widely distributed from Mossel Bay in the west to near Grahamstown in the east, and north to Somerset East and Graff-Reinet. This small aloe is stemless, usually forming clusters with two or three rosettes, and occasionally dense clusters up to 500 mm wide. The leaves are grey-green and up to 100 mm long and 15 mm wide. Both surfaces have soft white spines. The flowers are rather large compared to the size of the plant, and are scarlet or sometimes orange or yellow. Flowering occurs in August and September. The name humilis means ‘low growing’.The plants are found scattered about in small numbers, never in large dense groups as do many other aloe. They grow on flat stony or sandy area or on gentle slopes. They are not easy to spot unless in flower.Despite its wide distribution the species in considered vulnerable due to habitat degradation as a result of over grazing. This species, when not in flower is easily confused with Aloe longistyla which shares about the same geographical distribution. The scientific name longistyla refers to the long style which protrude from the mouth of the flower.

Haworthia cooperi forma pilifera is a cryptic beauty. It is endemic to the Eastern Cape Province, where it grows mainly in short grassland and is sometimes found in open Acacia savanna. In exposed aspects and in dry times of the year the plant pulls itself into the ground, sometime completely hiding itself. Then after the rains come the leaves will plump up and show themselves. These plants are almost impossible to find when not in flower. There are a number of varieties of cooperi; forma cooperi has longer pointed tip leaves, pilifera tend to have round or even flat leaf ends, while forma leightonii forms dense mats, its deeply purplish leaves are long and thin, and forma venusta has coarse white hairs covering its leaves. Cooperi are named for Thomas Cooper, pilifera means ‘with hairs’, referring to a pronounced point on the end of the leaf. Although the plants illustrated here don’t show the leaf hair we did see plants with this characteristic. Plants exposed to direct sun light, like these are, have withered necrotic or truncate leaf tips. The new leaves at the center of the rosette will display the leaf tip hair until the dry times come. Look closely at the pictures and you’ll see some of the hairs.

Given the size and the different ecosystems at Shamwari other Haworthia are likely present; cymbiformis and angustifolia for example.

Nearby is Amakhala Game Reserve and The Cottage at Reed Valley, my favorite place to stay when I’m in the Shamwari area. Rod and Tracy Weeks are great hosts.

I made a second visit to Swartwaterpoort. This is such a magical place, maybe a kilometer from end to end you could spend weeks there and not see all of it. The climbing is a bit rough.

Second trip to PE - Grahamstown area in 2000.

Met Tony Dold and David Cumming at the Pig and Whistle in Bathurst where we had coffee and made a plan for the day. Tony wanted to head toward East London to photograph some non Haworthia. David was ready to guide or follow along. So we went to Tony’s new site while David and I planned to spend the afternoon at a few cymbiformis sites in the Port Alfred area.

Kiwane is west of East London on the coast. Here we found Haworthia cooperi var. leightonii growing in the hot sun in baked mud flats

Along the way we stopped at Chalumna, west of East London to see Haworthia cymbiformis var cymbiformis.

On our way back west we stopped at an interesting looking rock slade near the Tyolomnqa Bridge and found a tiny and very tooth Haworthia. I was stumped as to which variety.

Later in the day David and I went around the Bathurst area stopping to see Haworthia venusta (a hairy cooperi).

South of Adelide we found a more typical cooperi in flower.

Slept well on the plane ride from JFK to JNB, so well that I woke with a start when the lights first came on for breakfast. My two days at Glaxo Pharmaceutical went well. Students were well prepared and have done brilliant work. Had a nice dinner at a German restaurant with the head man Colin Giltrow. Flight to Port Elizabeth Tuesday night was on time. Maddy Lehmann picked me up at Glaxo at 4pm and drove me to her home which is 10 minutes from the airport. I met her husband Peter and their two children Monica and Daniel. Monica is ready to graduate from high school. Like the Brits the South Africans call this educational stage “Matric” after matriculation. She hopes to go to technicon to study conservation. While at the Lehmann’s home Monica was finishing her maths homework and working on geography maps. She knew on her map right where her mother and I were going.

Maddy brought along a great book - “Vegetation of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland” edited by A. Barrie Low and A. (Tony) G. Rebelo, ISBN 0-621-17316-9 (C) Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 2nd edition February 1998.

August 9 - Women’s Day (SA public holiday) Reed Valley Cottage - Rodney and Tracy Weeks, cottage built in 1900 as a storage room, later expanded and converted to living quarters. Two very large bedrooms with baths, kitchen, and living room, patios. Had a nice breakfast; good strong coffee, scones, cereal, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, bacon, toast. And a nice conversation with Rod and Tracy.

Then off to Alicedale Station to meet Tony Dold and on to Swartwaterspoort. Tony is a botanist at the Selmar Schonland Herbarium at Albany Museum in Grahamstown. Not sure that we found the same place Bruce collected at but did find Haworthia cymbiformis and not-so-cymbiformis in the poort. From Alicedale we went north of toward Reibeek Oos on a dirt road that lead through the Swartwatersberg. The northern end of the poort is the most steep and readily accessible. Tony said the area had been turned over to a conservation venture. Did see one Black Eagle, and numerous Vervet Monkeys, and not much other wildlife other than a variety of birds. We had to cross a few stream along the way. Tony was driving an Isuzu bakkie, I was driving a VW Chico. We got to one crossing that was deeper than I was willing to cross. I parked and Maddy and I jumped in Tony’s truck. A km or so further along we parked and right there on the side of the road where the ridge came down we found Haworthia cymbiformis growing on the cliff face in the deep shade. These two are typical of the plants found lower down near the road.

We decided to climb up the ridge anyway. Tony was looking for a Faucaria nemorosa, a plant described in a recent Faucaria revision as being from a single locality and lost.

Since I climbed the higher part of the ridge I can upon the Faucarias and didn’t think much of them until I remembered Tony saying he was looking for something.

All along the ridge on the cool side were Haworthia cymbiformis in large numbers, some growing in with the Faucaria. The plants higher up the ridge were different than the ones seen at the bottom. The higher I climbed the plants became less flat, not as dark green, and maybe more like cooperi.

It took about 2 hours to climb up, over, and down the ridge. We then crossed to the west side of the road where I climbed a short way up a smaller ridge and found cymbiformis growing in small clumps in cracks in the shear rock face. These plants had longer, thinner, rounder leaves. Not typical boat shaped cymbiformis.

We then drove northeast up the N10 a short while to near Ripon Station and found bolusii var. blackbeardiana growing in shale.

Then back over the dirt roads through the northern end of the Swartwaterpoort when Tony forded the deep stream and dropped Maddy and I at the car. Then back southward to Alicedale and Paterson and Reed Valley Cottage. Hot shower felt great. Dinner with the Weeks was great. I showed them digital pictures of our day’s adventures which pleased them. We talked about dairy farming, changes in society and economy, wandering the world, families, conservation. What a wonderful young couple.

August 10 Howisonspoort just west of Grahamstown and found Haworthia cymbiformis growing out of reach high up on the cliffs. Luckily was able to find a few plants that had fallen laying on the ground. Albany Museum, met Tony Dold and got introduced to the library and herbarium. Not nearly as many Haworthia sheets as Compton, perhaps 300. Needs reorganizing. C.L.Scott donated his literature, photographs and notes. Of particular interest were the G.G. Smith log books. Had lunch at Spur.

Then headed south to Kenton-on-Sea. Found Haworthia coarctata. Looked for access to Boesmansrivier but din’t get very close so didn’t find any cymbiformis. Saw the ocean, looked like a lot of fun, big dunes, lots of surf. Drive Northwest of Kenton-on-Sea through Hopewell and Southwell.

Met Hannelie van der Merwe for dinner with the Weeks. Interesting lady, she is radically close to mother earth and all her children. Lost power from 7:15 until 10:40pm. Had dinner by candle light.

August 11; Went for a walk with Tracy Weeks and the kids through their farm. Saw various bulbs and shrubby mesembs. Spent from 10:30 till 3:30 with Hannelie on Shamwari. We found Haworthia coarctata in large numbers in a small 150′ by 50′ area on a ridge overlooking the Bushmans River. Plants had fewer spots then plants seen on Thursday. At another location we saw small Aloe humilis in flower along with Faucaria felina. We were very close to elephant, and could smell them, hear them trumpet, and snap branches. Felt nervous taking pictures, good thing Hannelie was watching over us.

On August 12th Trace and Rod Weeks took us for a game drive through a part of the Amakhala Game Reserve, we stopped at the Woodbury Chalets and made a climb up the ridge to find cymbiformis and a beautiful view, overlooking the chalets, waterfall, krantz, zebra, springbok.

Zuurberg Pass - took little six year old Damon Weeks, long and winding road. Haworthia glauca, massive fire, huge numbers of plants, mostly toast, but some with green hearts, a few patches miraculously unscathed.

I stopped at a rocky hillside, a chance to rest from the rattle of the washboard and obstructions of a tiny dirt road. I was hoping to find Haworthia angustifolia. Instead after having traversed the length of the hillside back and forth at three elevations I was turning back when Maddy called out, in a tone of voice I hadn’t heard before, something between wonder and doubt. She had found a Haworthia flower, but hadn’t yet found the plant. I came running. There at the bottom of the flower stalk was Haworthia cooperi. Maddy found her first Haworthia! I’m glad I stopped at this spot and I’m glad Maddy asked to join me on this trip. The cooperi would have been impossible to find had in not been for the flowers and Maddy’s sharp eye.

It’s Sunday July 2 in Johannesburg, and I’m just off the plane from New York. I’ll spend Monday consulting at an international pharmaceutical company. One of the advantages of my work is that travel is a paid expense. After completeing my work assignment I took a few days of personal time and flew to Cape Town on Tuesday. Bruce and Daphne Bayer were my hosts for the rest of the week. I have visited South Africa 3 times since 1995 and have taken every opportunity to be out in the veld looking for and looking at these wonderful plants. Earlier this year Bruce had challenged me to make a contribution, to stop being a sight seeing tourist, and instead apply myself more seriously. I have accepted the challenge. I want to understand the plain and simple cymbiformis. Bruce’s advice was to make a careful study of cymbiformis on the basis of what is known in collections and literature, and then make a useful study of cymbiformis on the basis of what is not yet known.

So off we went to Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. Bruce introduced me to Susette Foster, Jo Beyers, Pascale Chesselet, and Koos Roux. Until then I had never seen or handled herbarium sheets and didn’t know the access protocol. The curators and botanists all knew Bruce, but were very protective and cautious, and rightfully so. Unscrupulous people would use the herbarium records to go commercial field collecting. Without academic or professional credentials I would not have been allowed access to the herbarium records. I returned to Compton on Wednesday and spent from 9am till 2:30pm just reviewing the cymbiformis sheets, I didn’t even look at one other species. It would have taken me all week to review the whole genus. Not that there are that many sheets, perhaps 50 sheets for Cymbiformis and maybe 1000 for the whole genus, but each sheet has a story, each sheet a work of art. It was fascinating seeing sheets pressed by G. G. Smith back in the 40’s. Many with hand drawings of leaf cross sections or flowers. The list of collectors, again just in the cymbiformis include; Miss G. I. Blackbeard, Miss M. Courtenay-Latimer, F.A. Fouche, W. Leighton, G.G. Smith, J. Dekenah, Miss G. Britten, Mrs. Helm, F.R. Long, W.E Armstrong, and on.

Anyway, there are big holes in the collection record, vast geographical areas where cymbiformis should be found. The interactions between cymbiformis, cooperi, gracilis, decipiens, aristata, bolusii var. blackbeardiana, and other species has plenty to be explained and explored. One example of something requiring an explanation Bruce has a collection of Cymbiformis from Swartwaterspoort. There are 5 plants, all of them very different. Many Cymbiformis populations are fairly uniform within the population. Here in the poort we have a very active zone. I’d like to find out what is happening here; hybridization, environmental adaptation, overlapping populations. I want to find this population and then circle around it to find out the other actors. I suspect Cooperi, Gracilis, Bolusii var. blackbeardiana.

The day started very early on Thursday. We had to get up early and get to their son Warwick’s farm in Kuilsriver, some 20+ minutes from Cape Town center by 7:00. So I woke and started getting ready when I heard Bruce get up. Then I checked my watch and saw that it was 4:30! - so I went back to sleep and got back up again at 6:15. The purpose of the trip to son Warwick’s was to pick up a load of garden plants for deliver to a garden center in Robertson. We got to Robertson around 9:30, having cautiously inched our way through great heavy fog banks found on the eastern side of the Huguenot Tunnel on the N1 motorway. This being the Breede River Valley I guess the fogs are a common winter occurrence.

Then off to the south to explore. We found a Haworthia serrata like thing at a farm north of Bredasdorp. We drove up to a farm, found the farmer and introduced ourselves. What wonderful people. The man hopped into his truck and lead us across his farm to the rocky ridge where we hoped to find some plants. And we did find them in the thousands. Serrate being a fairly rare species in cultivation I was surprised at the vast numbers we found. I think the reason it’s not as common in collections as other plants is because the area we were in, called the Overberg is heavily farmed; wheat and sheep mostly, and all but the rock ridges have been plowed. So there are these little natural habitat “islands” that aren’t easy to get to, being in the middle of farms, in a vast farming district. I can only imagine the forms and varieties now long gone having been plowed under. On a similar mission in early 1999 I got myself incredibly lost on the dirt farm roads south of Riversdale. I was pleased this time to be tagging along as Bruce, following no map, went exactly where he planned to go and found something new.

Then we went to another spot looking for other species but didn’t find much but a few clumps of a mirabilis / serrata thing. The first farmer told us about another farm a few miles away. There we found a young man, perhaps mid twenties running this huge sheep farm. He stopped what he was doing and rode with us in the truck, he and I in the back. He gave Bruce directions and then he and I started chatting. He was amazed than an American would come all this way and be interested in kicking around on his hill side. He came for the walk with us and was happy to see the plants we were looking for. This, his first time ever noticing these plants. Moments later his two younger brothers drove up on a motor bike - our visit being the most exciting thing to happen in weeks! It was school holiday for the next week or two, so the boys were out of school and we were their educational entertainment. We drove on and with a bit of a struggle found a few plants of Haworthia mutica just off the road in a big patch of Aloe Trees. The plants were beautiful, but we could find only one small group of maybe 20 plants. Quite surprisingly, to me were the bunches and bunches of baby plants. Bruce dug up a few and transplanted them in other hopeful places. Maybe they’ll spread.

Thursday night we spent in a thatched roofed cottage on De Hoop Nature Reserve. This cottage is built in the classic Cape Dutch style with white washed walls, big tall ceilings. We had a fireplace, but didn’t really need it. The cottage came with full kitchen, pots and plates and all. Towels and a nice hot shower. Two bedrooms with extra blankets and pillows. The main room a combination kitchen, dinning and living room. All for an incredibly reasonable price of close to $35 for the night. De Hoop is southeast of Bredasdorp and right on the ocean. Bruce and Daphne are not ocean people. I was instantly drawn to the huge sand dunes and the smell of the sea but didn’t get to explore either. Next time I come to De Hoop I’m going to walk that beach! As a small consolation right out the front door of the cottage is an estuary with all sorts of ducks and scups and other water birds.

We had arrived there around 4pm and after tea went out for a hike returning at 6pm, just at sunset. We went looking for and found Haworthia mirabilis var. calcarea growing in calcrete, a white limestone cement like rock. We didn’t find the plants until we nearly given up and started back for the cottage. Earlier on the walk I had gotten very close to a small group of 8 Cape Mountain Zebra and I also saw several different kinds of bok. I think they were Bontebok and Springbok. The Bontebok is bigger than our North American White Tailed Deer and is mostly black with white markings; face, rump, socks and has long straight horns. The Springbok is smaller and is brown with white and dark brown markings. Really neat to see the animals without cages or fences.

On Friday, after a good nights sleep we drove east looking for more plants. We stopped at one farm near Napier and spoke with the farmer. He was happy to have us look on his hill, but not too interested in what we were doing. The hike was the longest of the two days, not too bad, say 3 or 4 km and only a bit of climbing. It took us forever to find the plants. But when we did we found tons of them. These plants being intermediate Haworthia serrata and mirabilis var. calcarea. The sun light was good and I got some good pictures - I hope.

Then after lunch we went looking at another site, but Bruce was disoriented, things looked different, he wasn’t sure where he was. We went to one hill but found nothing. Then down a dirt road we found a farm house and stopped in. The farmer was very interested, made us a sketch on how to get around his property to the ridge of hills that Bruce had been eyeing from the main road. And off we went. We found Haworthia badia in a new location. I first saw badia in 1995 when Kobus Venter took me to the type location. He made me swear secrecy - I wasn’t to tell anyone that I had even seen the plants in the wild, let alone what town. The 1995 site is in danger from human activity. Also the population is small and all the plants there could be easily collected in an hour or so. Bruce has since found 2 other locations. The one we found today had hundreds and hundreds of plants spread over a long distance. Haworthia badia is no longer in immediate danger of becoming extinct! The plants come in various colors from green to leaf tips tinted orange/red, to all orange/red, to dark milk chocolate almost cordovan colored. Beautiful plants. We then returned to the farm house to say thank you. The farmer and his wife invited us inside for coffee and cake. What a wonderful house, nice and cool inside, very formal, oil paintings on the walls, big grandfather clock, cut glass. The chocolate cake was great. The coffee nice and strong. The Bayer’s and the farmers yakked and yakked about plants and farming and herbs and medicine, and politics. We were there for an hour. A wonderful time. I’m welcomed back anytime!

Then a 2.5 hour drive back to Cape Town and pizza for dinner. I slept a little later than usual on Saturday, until 7am. Later in the morning I went to visit a wonderful plant grower. His name is Etwin Aslander. He is a few years younger than I, married to a wonderful woman and has a beautiful little girl about 3 years old. Etwin grows many different kinds of plants and he grows a lot of Haworthia very well. He works very hard, mostly by himself and is steadily building his business. He ships his plants all over the world and sells plants most of his plants on the web. Perhaps his business is getting bigger than he can handle. People complain that he takes too long to ship but may overlook the health and size of the plants he grows. I took a few pictures and looked at what he had and made some notes. We had tea and talked about people we know and about computers and about working together on a little project. Then in the afternoon I went to Durbanville to meet a friend of Kobus Venter by the name of Emile Heunis. Emil is my age. He has two boys, one 6 the other 10. Emile is a different kind of grower. He runs a Grey Heron Nursery, a cactus and succulent garden center which is less of a commercial enterprise as it is a living art gallery! Unfortunately he doesn’t sell plants by mail order but maybe he will someday soon. He also doesn’t have email, but he does have a computer. Someday soon he will get a new computer and then he will put his plant catalog on the web. He grows his plants very very very well. He has been influenced by his Japanese customers. He will grow trays of seedlings, pick out the 3 best and throw the rest away. I was shocked at how beautiful some of his plants were; beautiful, museum quality, works of art. Emile also likes to talk, and since I like to listen we hit things off. It was getting dark before I knew it. As I was leaving to go back to Cape Town he invited me to stay for supper. So there is this man who just met me for the first time inviting me into his home to sit down with his family. Nothing fancy but very tasty. I was very happy to make a new friend. Before I knew it darkness had come and it was getting late, back to the Bayer’s, then “call it a day” early and off to bed around 9. Sunday came, and off I went into Cape Town to sit at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and contemplate the sea. Then to Kleinbegin Farm to photograph more of Bruce’s collection and another nice dinner with his family.

As quickly as it started my short stay in the Western Cape was over and back I went to Johannesburg and back to work, spending the next week in Midrand and the following week in Bangkok Thailand. My last day in South Africa was spent with Madeleine Lehmann. Maddy and I first exchanged email a year earlier when I had offered Haworthia seed on one of the newsgroups. We spent a good part of the day at Witwatersrand Botanical Garden and hiked the paths up to Roodekrans.

Three weeks away from my girls (and my plants) was almost too much. And would have been had it not been for all of the wonderful people that touched me and the fantastic Haworthia that haunt my dreams. My work assignmnets in South Africa should continue, a week a month for the rest of the year.

I often wonder why I have written and still continue to write about Haworthia. The plants have had a special fascination for me since childhood, but it is not that I really enjoy these plants more than I do many others. The interest for me lay in the problem of identification and naming and I was continually asking where a particular plant seen illustrated or growing came from and what was it and why did the names seem to differ. As an entomologist I came to question all these names and their meaning, and to wonder about the classification. After all, it is the names that we use as individuals or as groups of people to grow, collect and communicate about the plants we interest us. So classification and names are just as basic and fundamental to us as a group of hobbyists as they are to botanists pursuing academic and intellectual truths. The history of Haworthia was clouded with conflict before I started writing and the pattern has continued despite what history should have taught us. I have personally made my best effort to generate a stable and sensible set of names for a community that I would like to be part of. This community I wanted to encompass was that of the ordinary collector, the more dedicated collector, the horticulturist, the commercial grower, herbarium and field botanists, and conservationists.

It has been immensely frustrating to see my ideal so thwarted and to find it so difficult to communicate what I consider to be simple ideas to all the sectors of the community I want to share with. Now at the closing of my life and what career there has been in Haworthia I feel the need to make some final effort. A motivating factor has been the recent publication in the German journal Avonia, of twelve new species and varieties of Haworthia by Ingo Breuer. If I ask what significance this has for the community I perceive out there, I cannot answer the question except to suggest that it may be the commercial value. I cannot see any other sense in it. The field collection has been done by South Africans who are not accredited by Nature Conservation to do the collecting, neither by any institution that supports their activities as far as I have been able to establish. Is it a product of bona fide research and does it justify the tacit support given by individual botanists who are involved in the writing of forewords and introductions? Regarding the classification involved, I throw up my hands in despair because none of these new taxa suggest to me the taxonomic significance that the descriptions or the describer may attach to them. It is quite probable that the collectors have some individual motivation and are not working through local institutions that could thwart their private goals.

Few members of my imaginary community seem to share my concerns. As a writer, editors are the main vehicles for publication and I have expected them to function as a filter to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable. The kind of reaction I receive from them is that everyone is entitled to an opinion and that the reader can make what he/she wills of any classification put before him or her. An editor has also said to me “I think the “problem” is that most people who like plants that I am addressing with the Journal are just hobbyists. Some are more serious than others. They want a good name, pretty plants, field trip notes, good books to pore over, but not necessarily devour. They don’t want to be confused, to the contrary, most want a hard and fast true answer… as if there is only one or ever will be”. However, I cannot agree. My conclusion from so many years of frustration and intellectual isolation, is that the problems lies in how we have all been led to regard botanical names and their meaning. Readers are already confused and editors are co-responsible. This is what I would like to address in this article.

After describing Haworthia limifolia var gigantea in 1962, I wrote “Haworthia as a problem genus” in 1970 and that article was published in this Journal. In effect what I said then was that there would never be order unless the species were to be seen as morphologically and geographically distinct entities. I also said that new species and varieties were not discussed adequately in terms of distribution or variability. Among my comments was it would take detailed and intensive coverage of the area before a sample could be taken as representative.

Since I wrote that article there has been a vast volume of water under the bridge and many new writers have come and gone or are still busy gnawing away at the carcase. The taxonomic situation in Haworthia is as confused now as it was in 1970 and before. Why? I think the answer is simple, and sadly so. The roots of taxonomy are in a foundation of shifting sand because a botanical name does not mean the same thing to everyone. As one editor put so succinctly…” There is no doubt that SPECIES should have a meaning, preferably one that is universally accepted so that everyone is on the same level”. Albeit that this conclusion was only reached after a long struggle to get this editor to distinguish between a species description and the definition of the word “species”.

This is a point that I have been struggling to make for a long time and it has amazed me that botanists talk about different kinds of species, biological species, phylogenetic species, chemical species and many more kinds of kinds. The word “species” has always meant to me “life-form”. Most people will agree that it is the basic unit of biology and yet there is this curious and incongruous use of the phrase “biological species” which suggests that there are species that are not of biology. Can one progress through a university curriculum and postgraduate study to a doctorate and still have no idea of what a species is or might be? My observation is that this is fact.

If botanists have not been able to establish a definition and agree on species definition, it is patently obvious that we have all the ingredients for an unholy mess. If there be any doubt about this, I would refer readers to all the literature on Haworthia, including my own. One botanist remarked that I was being silly insisting on a definition when the subject was one of continuous debate! Classification is largely a non-science. It is simply a descriptive activity ensconced in a web of legislative rules, articles and recommendations of a formal nomenclatural code. Anybody can become and be fully accepted as a taxonomist with absolutely no credentials, on the presentation of a description, a latin synopsis and the citation of a type. If in addition they can quote the clauses and articles of the International Code and throw in some latin phrases here and there, their stature is elevated. There is a whole field of literature which deals purely with the technicalities of the code and has no relation whatsoever to the plant species for which it was fabricated. It is a vast playing field. The tragedy is that there is no protection for the passive observer or interested party who should feel secure in the knowledge that there is logic and reason in the whole process of naming and communicating about plants.

Currently there are two trends in present time to remedy this unfortunate situation. Both are aimed at taking the subject to abstruse intellectual heights that will positively close the door and make it impossible for the uninitiated to participate. The one trend is to rely on the so-called science of cladistics and the other is to enter the realm of the sub-microscopic and analyze the genetic material on which the (still undefined) species rest. Neither trend is to address the underlying problem.

In my opinion cladistics should be seen clearly for what it is. It is multivariate analysis where character states are chosen and modified as subjectively as in conventional methodology to produce a two-dimensional “tree”. This tree is presumed to be the representation of the evolutionary processes in the plants being discussed. This is the element of time. But in this model the element of space (the branch ends) is restricted to one dimension. DNA methodology is primarily based on examining the sequence of nucleotide bases (amino acids) on a piece of the total protein strands that constitute the chromosomes or cellular protein that drives genetics. It is said that these amino-acid sites represent characters and thus looking at say 1000 sites (“characters”) is immensely superior to the guesses we make when we look at say flower colour or bract shape which we could choose to identify a “species”. The argument loses sight of the fact that these 1000 sites on a single gene sequence are but a fraction of the genome DNA (Sahtouris writes that the genes probably account for less than 1,5% of any single genome), whereas flower colour or bract shape may be the end-products of the interaction of many genes or of the entire genome. The end model is also only the same two-dimensional one of cladistics.

I have suggested that species follow a pattern that many natural systems do. My suggestion is that species are fractal. This means that they possess or exhibit variability that cannot be explained or plotted in linear or smooth curvilinear fashion. But I also define the word “species” – a dynamic system of living organisms in a group or groups of individuals that are morphologically, genetically and behaviorally continuous in space and time. This definition is not proposed as a fairy wand as one critic suggested. It is anything but. It does not make taxonomic decisions easier. It means that there is now a definition and standard in place against which one can question and evaluate species descriptions and taxonomic decisions. We have to see individual plants as members of systems and act on the fact that a name tied to a single dead herbarium specimen is less important than the meaning of the name referring to living forms. More incisively then, it makes it incumbent on the taxonomists to view species as systems in a greater whole of biology. There is a still greater objective and that is to see species as these life forms that give meaning to a creation science otherwise demands that we examine only mechanistically. It would mean that the classification process could be placed back on a proper scientific foundation and exclude individuals who pursue new names for atavistic pleasure, for egocentric and commercial goals, or for particular communities.

My experience has not been limited to Haworthia. I have to say this because inevitably when I meet another taxonomist the attitude is assumed that I am working in a strange and unique field. Also, condescendingly, that I am grubbing around in my own tiny space quite ignorant of the deep thoughts and knowledge of the inner sanctums of science. Generally the genus Haworthia is seen to be taxonomically intractable and largely so simply because it fascinates amateur collectors (and amateur taxonomists). I wish I could demolish this myth for once and for all. It is only intractable because botanists have been so self-satisfied and mollycoddled by lack of peer review in their backroom havens of herbaria that they have seldom really had to face the realities of natural variation. They have worked secure in the knowledge that there is no definition and that under these circumstances one opinion is a good as another. In the general forum of human behavior, someone who comes in from outside with a plucked flower in the hand is almost seen as demonstrating an above natural interest in flora and a flair for botany. With a bit of early encouragement the individual could presumably have been a great botanist. Haworthia is difficult perhaps because it is so well collected and so widely grown.

For a journal editor to say that readers are not interested in the problems of nomenclature and do not want to be confused is a denial and renunciation of responsibility. It is to say that readers are asleep and they should not be awakened; that they have been educated to an untruth and they should be left there. Furthermore, this is any case what we feed them and we have a vested interest in maintaining untruth. There is no general close interest in plants that extends to proper nomenclature. Very few people in the vast mass of society actually have a latin binomial anywhere in their vocabulary. As an oddball who has grown up and lived with such names it has been a constant war to have them seen as keys to knowledge. Instead of respecting this fact, it is common for people to proudly deny knowing the scientific proper names for living things.

Classification and nomenclature has become a laughing stock in society and a subject to be avoided. Unfortunately someone has to take it seriously and give it meaning. I have tried to do this for Haworthia for sincere and honest people who deserve better than the untruth and misinformation that is laid before them on a daily basis. My community has dwindled away to nothing. Where I was myself a lost sheep, I now feel like a shepherd with no flock!

With very little planning I found myself on my way back to South Africa for my third visit. A hole had opened up in my schedule on very short notice. Coincidentally I had been corresponding with Bruce Bayer about a project we had first talked about on my last trip there in 1997. So with a few phone calls and several emails I was off again to spend a couple of weeks with the wonderful people, landscapes, and flora of South Africa. This trip felt differently from the start; less afraid, I now know the way. Take the bus to JFK, check in, grab a bite to eat, exchange a little cash, then wait to get on the evening flight. Avoid alcohol, wear ear plugs, bring a neck rest, take a Melatonin tablet, and get to sleep. Its a long long flight to Johannesburg that feels a lot shorter if you can sleep for 6 or 7 hours.

At the same time my plans were less structured than my previous two trips; meet Bruce Bayer at the Cape Town airport and then take things one day at a time. The primary mission was to explore preparation of a Haworthia CD ROM to complement Bruce’s new book.

The flight out of JFK left an hour late and arrived in Johannesburg even later. Sprinting to my next flight I broke my first sweat of the trip. I arrived in Cape Town after dark some what exhausted and yet on pins and needles. Baggage claim was a sea of people; Muslims in white robes, kids whining, young women dressed in the latest fashion, old men needing shaves, tourists in khaki shorts and freshly pressed bush jackets ready for ’safari’. Bruce met me right away and off we went into the Cape Town night. I would be staying with Bruce for the first few days of my visit. The next morning we were off to see Ernst van Jaarsveld at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. Bruce needed Ernst’s help with revising a publication referencing Gasteria and we wanted advice on preparing location maps.

The new greenhouse at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. The greenhouse isn’t to keep the plants warm, its to keep them dry. South Africa has several climate zones; winter rainfall, summer rainfall, and hardly any rainfall. Cape Town gets rain in the winter and can be cool and damp, too damp for the Namib and Richtersveld biomes

Two Masters; Ernst van Jaarsveld and Bruce Bayer. Several small Aloe in flower. Kirstenbosch is a wonderful garden, a must see for any visitor to Cape Town.

Our first field trip was in the McGregor area.

The title of this article could also be “Haworthia is people”, but titles are difficult. This one is prompted by an article I saw in Readers Digest. The article was about the impact of the (in?)famous Kinsey Report on human sexual behaviour. The closing sentence was.. “As far as Albert Kinsey was concerned, the watchdogs of science were asleep at the switch”.
I find myself in a curious role. How many writers have a long trail with so many followers crossing it behind? I can actually vaguely remember meeting G.W. Reynolds as a four-year old. Looking back I regret that I did not make more of the contact I had with people who were part of Haworthia and my interest. These included G.G. Smith, Prof. Compton, R.A. Dyer, Miss Verdoorn, W.G. Armstrong, G.J. Payne, Meiring, Beukman’s daughter, Mrs Taute’s family, Doreen Court (daughter of Mrs Morris), Gordon King, Grace Blackbeard, Frank Stayner, J.W.Dodson and so many others. Why did I never write to J.R. Brown to whom I owe so much?
Who else has stretched their interest over so long a period and found their trail becoming so criss-crossed behind. Looking over my shoulder I see quite a string of prospective and aspirant writers on Haworthia. I see myself occupying the same kind of place in their minds that the people above have done in mine. Not being dead yet, makes me realise that while alive and available for comment and information, there is no call.
What my disappointment has been, is that despite so many interested people, there have been very few that I have felt to be kindred to. If I consider where I started, I have also to consider where I end. If I consider what I learned, I can consider what I can teach. To my dismay I seem to have learned too little, and tried to teach too much.
Now I have written a second book to examine myself as much as what those on my trail are doing. I do not want to throw in the towel like Smith did, and neither do I want to leave unfinished business. What unfinished business is there? Haworthia has not been fully explored nor explained.
1. Exploration.
a. I myself have many records which are not part of the herbarium record and neither are they part of the source from which collectors have drawn. There are also records gleaned by others which are available to some collectors but not to me. One reason is that I have actively discouraged collection and avoided undisciplined and unprincipled collectors like the plague. A principle of science is ‘No secrecy’. I would like to observe this and have tried to keep locality records on the basis of “well you never asked”. It is not nice to mention names and I will not do so, but there are several persons who have really exceeded the bounds of the rational in their collecting activity. Conservation agencies are, in my experience, helpless to do anything other than create a climate which deters honest people from venturing to pluck so much as a leaf. Less conservative, conscientious and sensitive souls function without qualm at the other extreme. Do I hide the records or do I appeal to the Haworthiophile community to institute their own code of conduct?
b. Records can also be ‘intellectual and experiential individual property’. I saw that in the ‘Aloe’ era, that there were collectors where this concept was manifest at extreme levels. Persons with no insight or understanding of what Reynolds had done in terms of record, were accumulating, obscuring and losing data which could have enriched that considerably. This is, and has happened in Haworthia too. For a decent book to be written on Haworthia there has to be a decent physical record. Several people have fiddled and faddled with Aloe since Reynolds, and have made several big changes. In the light of knowledge and record, the changes they have made are trivial. These fiddlers have not done more than what Reynolds did, and neither have they even reached the experiential level that he had.
2. Explanation.
a. I have tried to see classification as a scientific process based on facts and undisputeable observation. It is very evident that it is not treated like that. In the subgenus Haworthia, classification is just imagery. What I have done is to place this imagery in the real physical world of geographic space, based on a life-long experience of ‘classification’ of this kind, and thus inferred from my knowledge of other genera. In order to question the image I have, the viewer has to stand either where I have stood, or to seek a better and higher viewpoint.
b. Science is driven by question and answer. Answers generate more questions. Science is knowledge and knowledge is only really referrable to that which is true. The philosophy of science is expressed at an intellectual level that few of us are able to reach and I do not pretend to.

So what has this to do with dogs? Science is driven by publication and peer review. A scientist becomes recognised by publications and responses to those publications. A scientist and science writer is kept on the track of truthfulness and knowledge by the responses he gets. These responses by competent and peer scientists constitute the watch tower of truthfulness, credibility and authority. These place beacons along the path of knowledge which is surely the one we wish to travel.
My complaint, first expressed in 1986, was against reviewers. My strongly held view was that instead of providing direction, they were doing the opposite. I thought the dogs were asleep, untrained or just turning a blind eye to the scene. Where nomenclature is concerned, it is another matter. There is another hungry breed here which scavengers for scraps. I have indulged in ‘polemic’ because it is is the mechanism for attack and defence of doctrine. The doctrine I have tried to defend appears to be a fantasy of my own. I have felt the absence of competent and wakeful watchdogs and have tried to fill the role myself - in vain. So that is the dog I have been, apparently barking at the dark - alone.

The title of the talk(s) was given as, “Haworthia, why controversy?”

I have come to the U.S.A. on invitation and the reasons I accepted this invitation are manifold. Primarily I feel a sense of responsibility and duty to the subject, secondly I feel a sense of obligation as my interest in the genus owes much to the USA for the role J R Brown played in stimulating my interests in the genus, and thirdly I felt I ought to dispel the discomfort of the culture shock I had experienced in the U.S.A. when I visited it in 1982.

I have wanted to give talks that will in some way enrich the lives of the people who hear them, and this seems to be a very arrogant wish against the limited wisdom which an ordinary individual can acquire about anything in a life-time. But I am concerned about the confusions and controversy, which seems to be associated with the plants I enjoy so much. Classifications and taxonomy have acquired such a negative connotation, and yet they are both fundamental to the whole experience of knowing and growing plants. Without good classification there is no way of organising our thoughts and communicating with one another about the plants.

My interest in Haworthia dates back to my childhood and a deeper interest developed from plants of H. limifolia, which an uncle had collected in Natal. Living in Natal myself, I started to collect plants by corresponding with other collectors and nurseries. It soon became obvious to me that most of the plants seemed to be very ordinarily the same. I was by then a qualified entomologist researching the biology of Noctuid moths, and my study was taking me into the realm of classification and identification which formed the basis of my master’s thesis. My career took a turn and from a government research post I moved to commercial agriculture until fortuitously I landed up as Botanical Assistant to the Curator of the Karoo Botanic Garden in Worcester. There I was given the job of curating collections and given access to the Compton Herbarium and all the Collected Works of G G Smith. I very quickly learned that there was little relation between the available published works on Haworthia and the diversity of the plants I was seeing in the field.

Six years later I could produce a book which was an illustrated checklist of names which I thought could be used to usefully explore the Haworthia further, and also to provide a firmer basis of John Pilbeam’s book on Haworthia and Astroloba. My handbook was revised in 1983 and then in 1985, Col Scott’s book was published which virtually ignored anything which either Pilbeam or I had done. This book seemed to undo any progress which had been made to stable nomenclature in Haworthia and I was very disappointed to find my work categorised with the confusion that collectors have since found themselves in. My conviction is that publishers, editors, other writers, and other collectors whether really serious or not, have simply failed to properly identify the sources of confusion and address them in an ordered way. In my talk I would like to deny any responsibility for any confusion and try to acquire some credibility by pointing out that my work is based on:

1. Extensive fieldwork and thus familiarity with the plants in their native state
2. A knowledge and review of all the literature (I may be the last person who can say I have read all the literature)
3. Extensive experience with pattern recognition in biological systems
4. Knowledge and experience of classification and identification in many plant genera
5. A very comprehensive physical herbarium record located in three different herbaria
6. A clear species definition for the work
7. A long period of validation and testing over a period of 35 years from my first publication on the subject, to the present

When a recent catalogue stated that there was confusion in Haworthia classification, what they were actually doing was confessing their own downright intellectual laziness, and inability to discriminate between writers who are themselves confused and those who are not.

In reading Gould’s book I was also reminded of my childhood belief that the continents of the world had once been joined because they so obviously fitted together. It was interesting to observe that it is only in the last ten years that this hypothesis is accepted as a probable explanation because tectonic plate studies provide an explanation for how this has happened. However, it is the denial of continental drift in the absence of a prior knowledge of this mechanism which is curious to me and I do not think that is science. This has strengthened my view that science is not a matter of education and qualification, profession or position and an impressive CV. It is an attitude which is grounded on common sense and organisation of scepticism.

In order to have this attitude about species, we do need to have a reasonable idea of what a ’species’ is. Unfortunately science seems to have failed us here as good definition of the term seems either hard to find or impossible to understand and we have to go our own way to do so. Firstly we have to consider that the work should be seen to be a postulate of the biological sciences for a concept of a basic building block for the understanding and classification of all living things in a unified system. Thus it is not for us to hi-jack it, and use to classify things in our individual minds on a basis of limited information, limited material and limited understanding of biological systems, for our own limited purposes.

Unfortunately available definition of the term is poor. The Collins Dictionary defines ’species’ as those groups into which a genus can be divided, and it then defines ‘genus’ as a group which can be divided into species. The Websters’ Dictionary inserts the work ‘logically’ before ‘divided’. Very few botanical revisions and classifications actually address this question of definition, while on the other hand there seems to be intense intellectual discussion of a biological species concept against other concepts. I cannot see much sense in this. Generally the zoological concept of a species as ‘a group or groups of individuals capable of interbreeding or potentially interbreeding’ is basic to the classification system. This fails in plants because of interfertility across even generic lines. I have simply devised my own definition as ‘a group or groups of individuals interbreeding or potentially interbreeding which vary continuously in space and in time’. This brings us face-to-face with the actual problem of having to determine where these continuities are in space and in time. The problem is that it is the continuities that are obscure and confusing and difficult to describe and circumscribe. Knowing this can make a big difference to how we organise our scepticism about a classification and what we should look for to determine the credibility of writers who can do no better than to confuse themselves and the rest of us.

All too often the view is expressed that classification is an art form and that it expresses the opinions of the individual. If imagination, phantasy and ignorance are the qualifications for the work, then indeed art is what one may get.

In truth classification is and has to be a science in the sense that it has to be based on physical and measurable data. That data has to be accessible to all. Statements must be verifiable and if they are contested, new data should be presented to verify the new and proven statement. This gives rise to a structure of knowledge and information in which the names we use are meaningful and informative. In the case of Haworthia there is a problem (which is not incidentally unique) in that there are very few tangible characters on which classification can be based. Even the characters which differentiate genera in the larger context can be disputed. Therefore, the key to understanding species in Haworthia has to be based on geographic distribution and the spatial relationships and continuities which are observed in the field. Unfortunately again, the strictures of the nomenclatural system and its controls to stabilize names, does sometimes make it a little difficult for the classification to really express how species are related in the field. I have recognised that there is often continuity of varying degree between many different species, and that often I am simply recognising significant nodes in a fairly turbulent sea of similarity. The botanical code requires that names may not necessarily be co-incident with principle nodes. My approach in my first Handbook of 1976 was to try and find as great a relationship between nomenclaturally valid names and the variation in the field. I know I achieved this in very large measure and I have tried to build on that foundation ever since. However, there seems to be no way that the nomenclatural code, whatever its pretensions are to ensuring stability, can do to prevent the structure of the classification from being rattled, shaken and even broken. The onus lies entirely at the door of the individual who should recognise how important it then is for organisation of scepticism.

In my slide presentations, I have pointed out that the genera in the tribe Aloideae of the FamilyAsphodelaceae (following the new dispensation for the classification of plant families by Dahlgren) are not properly understood. What hypotheses have been put forward have been based on some very very poor character definition and analysis. The obvious sub-divisions within the genus Haworthia have been completely ignored and if this is the case I cannot see how any attempt to resort the genus can have any credibility.

I have shown a ‘flow-chart’ showing how the species of the ‘retuse’-type species are linked in a cobweb-like diagram. I pointed out that there are main role players in this web and that the species can be understood in the context of names which relate to geographic centres. My slides were selected to show some of the pathways in and between different centres. This was also to emphasise that a classification has to encompass all plants both known and unknown. In this way there is a predictive element. It is new collections and new methodology which test the classification and its predictions. This process is how an hypothesis is tested and how a classification is shown to be a product of a sceptical and inquiring mind; rather than the artistic product of an individual, driven by some undefined motive underlying a pretension to really understanding what has been done, and what needs to be done.