h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(I will work parts of this journal entry into separate Guide entries for my own satisfaction or for anybody else who's interested in this sort of stuff).

This is more or less my 'Mission' for the coming weeks, months and years: to learn to cultivate indigenous species of Southern African plants.

I am fortunate to have access to two excellent sources of seeds of Southern African plants.

The first is Silverhill Seeds (if you're interested in their excellent services, just google them) who supply a vast selection of seeds of mainly South African species with a few from further North and occasionally Madagascar. These guys collect seeds from the wild on various expeditions. I usually order from their online catalogue several times each year.

Then there's the National Botanical Institute, that offers seeds mainly gathered from the Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens in Cape Town. This garden hosts a great selection of indigenous South African plants, the result of ages of collecting and cultivation from since Europeans first landed in these parts. Unfortunatly I've not yet been to the gardens themselves! But thanks to their catalogue I can now order seeds of many of the plants grown in the garden. Their selection is not quite as extensive as that of Silverhill, but they still offer many species I'll have difficulty getting by other means.

I've already ordered and received tree seeds from Silverhill and am now hard at work getting them planted. Today I sent in a second order, this time for succulent plants.

I absolutely love succulents! South Africa happens to host about 4600 different species of succulent plants! They belong mainly to these groups:

1. Aloes! Some of you may know about these because they are popular garden plants even in America and Europe. But Aloes are mainly native to Africa and Madagascar. South Africa has about 150 species, and there are additional species especially in Zimbabwe and Namibia. I am wild about Aloes, since there's an incredible diversity of them, from the tiniest, Aloe saundersiae, which is at most eight inches tall with leaves only an eighth of an inch wide, to the tree aloe, Aloe bainesii, which can reach 60 ft with a trunk 10 ft thick! And all of them have interestingly shaped and patterned fleshy leaves, and most have very attractive flowers. I already have a good collection of different aloe species, though it's nothing like complete! I would be happy if I can someday have about 60-70 different species. Silverhill offers the seeds of over 70 different species ... the trick is to get them germinated!

2. Aloe relatives. These are mainly the genera Bulbine, Gasteria and Haworthia. Bulbines have softly succulent leaves, with untoothed margins, and are generally small and delicate plants. Gasterias are also generally smaller than Aloes, but with fairly thick fleshy leaves, often with a rough, warty surface. Haworthias are typically very much smaller than aloes, with rough to smooth leaves, with exquisitely shaped and patterned little rosettes. I've already a few different kinds of Haworthias and Gasterias. These I've found, mainly, in the gardens of friends and family, and in nurseries around the country. I would never remove a Gasteria or a Haworthia from the wild! These are all rare and should receive maximal legal protection. I *am* somewhat concerned that some of the plants I've bought might have come from the wild, originally ... but these plants *can be* successfully cultivated from seed and many *have been* cultivated for quite a long time and are widespread in horticulture so I hope for the best. I would always prefer to get species from companies like Silverhill, who I know do 'ethical' collections of seeds only, and from the National Botanical institute.

3. Crassulas or 'Tackies'. Of these there are about 300 local species. They are usually small plants with very neat, geometric leaf arrangements and pretty little rosettes. Several have pretty flowers as well. The largest include the Kalanchoes, with inflorescences that can exceed 2m in height, and the jade plant (Crassula ovata) that can become a tree 5m in height with a trunk of a metre thick! These are, generally, not rare or endangered. Many of them can grow from pieces of stem or from single leaves. Some species flower and then the above-ground parts die, but resprout from the bottom afterwards. My 'specimens' that I have here at home included plants raised from 'pieces' collected from common species from the wild as well as plants from other people's gardens. I am going to try, more and more, to raise them from seed. Their seeds are extremely fine, which makes it difficult, but once I succeed with the seeds, I'll have a very good selection of species available to me through Silverhill and the NBI.

4. Carrion flowers or Stapeliads. This is a wonderfully diverse group still little known to the common gardener, but there are a few Stapeliad enthusiasts around the world. These plants are also very easy to grow from pieces of plants. But they're also very easy to grow from seeds! They have very interestingly coloured, patterned and shaped flowers. Most have flowers that are fairly small, about half an inch to an inch across, but even the small flowers are very pretty. A few species have large flowers - the largest being the Giant Carrion Flower, Stapelia gigantea, which can have a flower 16 inches (40 cm) across! These flowers are often hairy. The flowers are intended to resemble carrion ... rotting pieces of meat with hair attached ... and some species even exude a putrid smell! This isn't really upsetting though (well to me at least). The flowers attract flies that come in search of food for their maggots. Sometimes they depart again after finding no food, or sometimes they lay eggs on the flower (which hatch and the maggots then die) but in each case they depart carrying some pollen, hopefully to another flower, and thus pollinate the carrion flowers. Carrion flowers are not parasitic though! They make no use of flies except as pollinators. Some species are also pollinated by certain species of beetles, or bees. There are about 300 species of Stapeliads in Southern Africa. They also occur in Madagascar, tropical Africa (especially Northeast Africa, mainly Somalia), and some species in Arabia, and India and other parts of Asia. Most of them occur in dry semidesert or savannah regions. They are attractive not just for their flowers, but also because of their very interestingly shapped, coloured, patterned and arranged succulent stems.

5. Euphorbias. This is a single huge genus occurring widely and including many nonsucculent species, but in Southern Africa the vast majority of species are succulent. There must be about 300 or more species of them as well. They are amazingly diverse in shape and size. The largest are species like Euphorbia ingens and Euphorbia triangularis, trees reaching 30 to 60 ft in height with thick trunks. They are very interestingly shaped with thick succulent stems and branches, and no leaves (or small leaves that fall off soon after forming). Their braches are usually green or greyish and formed into angled segments frequently with 'wings' and spines on the angles. Every species differs from the others in aspects such as the length and thickness of the segments, the numbers of angles, the shapes of the 'wings' and/or spines, and as to whether the trunk and/or branches branch and rebranch, and at what distances they do so, and of course the ultimate shape and size of the plant.

Apart from the tree-sized species (there are about 20 of them) there is a vast host of smaller shrubby species, with equally interesting features. Some are thorny, and some thornless. Some resemble cacti. (There is only a single species of actual cactus in South Africa ... it is small and relatively unknown. The Euphorbias are unrelated to the true cacti.) Then there are the smallest kinds, that form flat to rounded 'cushions' on the ground, formed by the crowded-together tips of short stems all growing out of an underground rootstock or tuber.

Some euphorbias can be grown from segments of branches, but many (especially the ones with underground rootstocks or tubers) cannot be cultivated this way. I am looking into cultivating euphorbias from seeds. At the University of the North (where I intend to study Botany starting next year) they're doing research into tissue-culturing Euphorbias. Some species of Euphorbia are abundant, but there are many rare and restricted species, some of which are very endangered.

6. And then there is the *vast* group generally known as the 'Mesembs'! This is a HUGE group, an incredible diversity of mostly very-small plants - probably about 3000 different species here in South Africa! The smallest species are frequently the most fascinating. These include the 'stone plants' ... because they resemble stones! The different species are designed to resemble the different kinds of stones and pebbles of their native habitats. These plants include several different genera, such as Conophytum, Argyroderma, Pleiospilos, and Lithops. Plants are almost impossible to see amongst the stones and pebbles, except when they are flowering! Many produce flowers that are almost larger than the rest of the plant, and coloured white, yellow, pinkish or purplish. These little plants are also known as 'flowering stones'.

But apart from the various 'stone plants' the Mesembs include a wealth of other kinds of species, up to a few that are shrubs or small trees. Most have interestingly shaped leaves, and/or pretty flowers. Many mesembs can be cultivated from pieces of plants, but I'm also looking into learning to cultivate them from seed. Their seed is fine, but often germinates readily. I am soon going to order me some seeds, especially of Lithops and Pleiospilos, but also of other interesting groups like Aloinopsis, Titanopsis and Faucaria. I've already found various very interesting specimens in local nurseries, but now I want to learn to cultivate them from seeds myself!

7. Finally there are several small groups of unusual succulents. These include Anacampseros (usually very small desert succulents); the Adeniums and Pachypodiums (small thick-stemmed plants with pretty flowers); the Sansevieras (plants with underground rhizomes and upright, thick and fibrous leaves often attractively striped and patterned)l; the Cyphostemmas (plants with fleshy leaves and very thick stems or underground tubers); the Adenias (not to be confused with Adeniums!) which are related to passion flowers and have very thick basal stems from which thinner, twining stems arise that drape over surrounding vegetation; the Kleinias and Senecios - succulent members of the Daisy family, with succulent stems and/or leaves and frequently pretty flowers too; a few species of Plectranthus, Thorncroftia and Aeollanthus - plants in the Sage family, with fleshy aromatic leaves, and sometimes thick succulent stems and rootstocks, or spindle-shaped fleshy roots, and pretty whitish, pinkish, purplish or bluish flowers; and a few succulent tree-like plants like the Porkbush (Portulacaria afra), the Wolf's-toe (Ceraria namaquensis), the Sesame Bushes (Sesamothamnus lugardii and relatives), the Floursack-tree (Moringa ovalifolia), the Star-Chestnut (Sterculia rogersii) and the ultimate succulent, the Baobab Tree (Adansonia digitata)!

That broadly covers the succulents ... of course there are a great many non-succulent species of exceeding interest in South Africa as well! I will aim to cultivate many of them also ... but for me, for now, the succulents represent an excellent point of departure from where I can 'launch' myself into an exploration of the full diversity of Southern African plants.

Well anyways, my mission in the plant-cultivating sphere is to find seeds (or cuttings, where applicable) of as many species of the above as possible, and learn how to cultivate them. This I want to do with a view towards accomplishing the following objectives:

1. I want to get to know more species of plants, up close and personal! I want to be able to recognise them in the wild, I want to know how they grow and how I can grow them. I can order known, identified seeds from Silverhill or elsewhere, and get to know the plant as I grow it ... or I can learn to identify them in the wild, and collect seeds from the wild and grow them at home and so get to know them even better through their various growth stages.

2. I want to teach other people about them! The best way is to *show* people. Apart from my growing collection here at home, I am going to start a collection on the farm of a guy I know (I refer to this in the introduction of my Uspace). This is a nice guy with a nice family (three daughters and another girl they take care of) and I think we could do a good job together. The farm is a short distance outside Pietersburg and would make a great place for a botanic garden. I hope I could attract some attention to this garden ... for now it's still in the 'planning stages' but there's a heck of a lot of potential!

3. I want to create websites about them! Of course this is still connected to the previous point. But I aim to eventually write web-pages about every species in my collection, illustrated with my own photographs and drawings and paintings. I hope to attract attention to it from people here on h2g2, but I also hope to be able to raise interest among people here in South Africa! It will be a long-term project but if I can attract enough interest, I *could* do a good job of raising plant-awareness.

4. Ultimately, I want to write books about them! Titles like 'Plant Awareness in Southern Africa' or 'Plant Appreciation' or 'Guidelines for Plant Propagation and Conservation' or something in that line ... after I've learnt a lot more than I know now, and after I've gained a lot more experience, of course! But this would be the ultimate: to leave behind a book, or a few books, as a legacy, and to continue raising awareness even after I'm dead.

5. I want to help with the conservation of our local species! At the moment I don't have any 'endangered plants' in my collection. I will collect rare and threatened species only in an ethical and legal manner: either get seeds from somebody who has the authorisation to collect seeds from the wild, or from people who have already cultivated some of them in botanic gardens and collections, such as the folks at the NBI. OR I might someday myself get the permission to launch expeditions into the wild to collect small amounts of seeds and/or cuttings. BUT AT ANY RATE: with rare species, I would gear my strategy towards a few different goals: firstly, to cultivate a large number of individuals from seeds/cuttings gathered from the wild, and then return these to the wild, to boost the natural wild populations of these plants; secondly, to *KEEP* a further large number of individuals of these rare plants in (a) botanic garden(s) outside of the main habitat, as an additional safeguard to protect the species; next, to try and cultivate an additional excess of individuals of these species, and sell them to the public for their gardens, in this way to meet the demand for these plants, without touching the wild populations, so that no further plants are removed from the wild. The last point is very important, because virtually all of our succulent plants are highly sought after by gardeners, collectors and enthusiasts, and many of our most delightful species are now rare and becoming endangered because people are collecting whole plants from the wild, from their small and restricted natural populations, for their gardens or to sell to other people. The goal I have is that, with these species, we should declare their habitats as nature reserves and rigorously protect them there, and just gather a small amount of seeds (and remember, plants produce very many more seeds than are ever able to actually germinate in the wild, but if we humans properly tend the seeds we can get a much higher percentage of germination) or a few cuttings, and from these cultivate individuals outside of the habitat ... we can grow thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of them ... and then we can use *these* cultivated plants to sell to people to satisfy their demand for these plants to take the pressure off them in their natural habitats.

Well, these points define my own 'mission' for the future. Do you think I'd be doing a good job? Do you *think* I'd be up to a job as big as this? Does it sound like I know what I'm doing? I must say, I *feel* extremely small, stupid, weak and insecure and daunted by the prospects I'm facing ... but also, I absolutely *love* our native South African plants, and I want with my whole heart to work like heck to do whatever I can for them, and I am going to do my darnedest, fear or no fear, dread or no dread! I just desperately hope that I'm going about things the right way...