Cultured Dragons. Nemesia versicolor, Nemesia or Cape Snapdragon, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
German plant collector Johann Frantz Drège (1794-1881) (see my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/34721393640/in/photoli...) found the forebears of this pretty Nemesia versicolor during the Summer of 1830 in three places in South Africa: notably in the west between Lange Vlei and Heerenlogement and in the east near Silver Fontein not far from the uMzinyathi River (Buffalo River) running down from the Drakensberg, part of South Africa's Great Escarpment relatively near Lesotho. In the scientific literature there's confusion about the exact coordinates of these places. Drège's extant herbarium exemplars (Missouri; both from Lange Vlei [see internet photos]) were identified by Adèle Lewis Grant (1881-1969) as Nemesia versicolor Benth. in 1930 but the coordinates ([28°34'22"S][023°49'34"E] are for a place west of Kimberley and neither for Lange Vlei nor for Silver Fontein.
Drège was an intrepid and exacting collector, and he noted down carefully where he found his plants. His notes were later edited by his friend Meyer in 1843 and our Nemesia was scientifically described in 1836 by George Bentham.
Drège returning to Germany in 1834 married and, remarkably, renounced his adventurous life. He became the director of a nursery business. These pretty flowers in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam derive, I am pretty sure (the inset 'red' is, I think, not a 'naturally' occurring form), not from those South African climes but they're the cultivar products of a Dutch nursery. I'll have to ask my friends at the Hortus from which one.
Cultured Dragons. Nemesia versicolor, Nemesia or Cape Snapdragon, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
German plant collector Johann Frantz Drège (1794-1881) (see my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/34721393640/in/photoli...) found the forebears of this pretty Nemesia versicolor during the Summer of 1830 in three places in South Africa: notably in the west between Lange Vlei and Heerenlogement and in the east near Silver Fontein not far from the uMzinyathi River (Buffalo River) running down from the Drakensberg, part of South Africa's Great Escarpment relatively near Lesotho. In the scientific literature there's confusion about the exact coordinates of these places. Drège's extant herbarium exemplars (Missouri; both from Lange Vlei [see internet photos]) were identified by Adèle Lewis Grant (1881-1969) as Nemesia versicolor Benth. in 1930 but the coordinates ([28°34'22"S][023°49'34"E] are for a place west of Kimberley and neither for Lange Vlei nor for Silver Fontein.
Drège was an intrepid and exacting collector, and he noted down carefully where he found his plants. His notes were later edited by his friend Meyer in 1843 and our Nemesia was scientifically described in 1836 by George Bentham.
Drège returning to Germany in 1834 married and, remarkably, renounced his adventurous life. He became the director of a nursery business. These pretty flowers in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam derive, I am pretty sure (the inset 'red' is, I think, not a 'naturally' occurring form), not from those South African climes but they're the cultivar products of a Dutch nursery. I'll have to ask my friends at the Hortus from which one.