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A simplex mistake
Browsing
the bookshelves of my parents home I spotted a book entitled "The Wild Flowers Of
Southern Africa: Natal - A rambler's Pocket Guide" written by Dr Winifred G. Wright
back in 1963. The dust cover told me that Dr Wright emigrated to South Africa in 1949
where her husband consulted to the Electricity Supply Company, which was responsible for
the erection of power lines from Colenso to Durban. It was at this time that she became
interested in the wildflowers of Natal. On her husband's recommendations she kept a record
of the flowers that where destroyed by the construction of these power lines. This
culminated in the above mentioned book.
I hastily paged through to the section on Proteas. Evidently the power lines had not taken a toll on the Proteas as the only record is for Protea simplex. Her caption reads thus; "A record of the wild flowers of Natal cannot be complete without mentioning a Natal species of this family, so prolific in the Cape, Protea Simplex, the simplex meaning "unbranched."" The one found was a tiny plant growing on a hillside near Emberton. "This Protea is known as the Sugar Bush, or Suikerbos, because of the sweet juices present in the calyx, which may be concentrated and used as a cough mixture."
So, on Christmas day we went to the Emberton area to locate Dr Wright's plot. We travelled around scanning likely-looking areas of grassland. Eventually at Springside Nature Reserve, totally deserted, we saw a sign for a Protea Trail. With high hopes we headed up the trail and within 100 m came upon a population of very supple looking Protea welwitchii.
Going back to Dr Wright's book and rereading her description and looking at her illustrations I am sure that she has mixed up P. welwitchii with P. simplex. However she is not the only botanist to collect P. simplex in this area: J. Medley-Wood records the same species from the Fields Hill area. So does P. simplex occur in the area or have past collectors been making fundamental identification errors?
A task for the Durban bound atlassers.
Nicholas Cole
| Dwarf Grassland Sugarbush - Protea simplex | Dwarf Savanna Sugarbush - Protea welwitschii | |
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