Polygala myrtifolia. Purple Elegance in Stellenbosch, Jan Marais Nature Preserve, South Africa
Ubiquitous in the West Cape, South Africa, this particularly elegant form of the Polygala myrtifolia called Bloukappie [=Bluehood] in the Afrikaans language was seen in Stellenbosch. It was extensively described first by Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe (1802-1862), a German physician and botanist trained at Leipzig. He went to the Cape in 1831 where he practiced as a doctor, later becoming the first colonial botanist and also South Africa's first professor of botany (1858). He was anthropologically interested and described the use to which the Bloukappie was put by the Cape Malays: they extracted from the white-gray bark of the shrub's twigs a liquid with which they bathed the limbs of their deceased. Perhaps they understood the anti-bacterial working of that elixir.
Incidentally, the Cape Malays are the descendants of the slaves and political/religious (Muslim) dissidents whom the Dutch transferred from the Dutch East Indies to the Cape, especially after 1654. Today they are a large community of some 200,000 in the Cape, many of whom live in an especially beautiful hillside area of Cape Town called the Bo-Kaap, that is increasingly being yuppified.
Polygala myrtifolia. Purple Elegance in Stellenbosch, Jan Marais Nature Preserve, South Africa
Ubiquitous in the West Cape, South Africa, this particularly elegant form of the Polygala myrtifolia called Bloukappie [=Bluehood] in the Afrikaans language was seen in Stellenbosch. It was extensively described first by Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe (1802-1862), a German physician and botanist trained at Leipzig. He went to the Cape in 1831 where he practiced as a doctor, later becoming the first colonial botanist and also South Africa's first professor of botany (1858). He was anthropologically interested and described the use to which the Bloukappie was put by the Cape Malays: they extracted from the white-gray bark of the shrub's twigs a liquid with which they bathed the limbs of their deceased. Perhaps they understood the anti-bacterial working of that elixir.
Incidentally, the Cape Malays are the descendants of the slaves and political/religious (Muslim) dissidents whom the Dutch transferred from the Dutch East Indies to the Cape, especially after 1654. Today they are a large community of some 200,000 in the Cape, many of whom live in an especially beautiful hillside area of Cape Town called the Bo-Kaap, that is increasingly being yuppified.