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Johann Frantz Drège (1794-1881) of Altona, Germany and his two brothers had an adventurous spirit and entrepreneurial instincts. The elder brother Carl established himself as a pharmacist at the Cape of South Africa in 1821 and his younger siblings, Johann and Eduard joined him there in 1826. They were professional plant hunters and European collectors payed them for their finds. But Johann was also something of a note-keeping naturalist. He had after all been trained in horticulture at Göttingen. He dutifully described all his finds geographically and geophysically, and this earned him the epitheton 'father of South African phytogeography'. Drège returned to Germany at the end of the 1830s to become a nurseryman.
Within five years or so (1843) Drège's friend Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer (1791-1858), a professor of Botany, published his collection of plants. According to his count some 7000 species but today known to be closer to 8000, comprising some 200,000 specimens.
Among these plants was also this Succulent- or Hairy-leaved Pelargonium, Pelargonium dasyphyllum. Those leaves are well-adapted to the harsh conditions of the arid mountainous regions west-southwest of Lesotho, 'Silwerfontein, Copper Mountain and Kaus'.
The Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam has a small but varied collection of plants from South Africa. Most are in the Temperate Greenhouse; this pretty, Platinum-White Pelargonium though is in the Arid House. It is said to be the widest-ranging of the Pelargoniums.
Perhaps it was first collected in South Africa by indefatigable Paul Hermann (1646-1695) who traveled widely with the Dutch East Indies Trading Company; from 1679 onwards he was the professor of botany at the University of Leiden and the director of the local botanical garden. In his catalogue of plants he describes it as growing there in 1687: 'Geranium africanum, alchemillae hirsuto folio, floribus albidis', as great Carolus Linnaeus has it with reference to Hermann. By 1693 it's already being cultivated by Jacob Bobart (1641-1719) in England. Its present scientific name was given it by Charles Louis l'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800) in 1789.
Interestingly, the Xhosa language of the Eastern Cape calls our Platinum-white Pelargonium by the name 'umtetebu'. That same word is used also for a totally different, vibrant orange or vermillion fllowering plant, well-known Cyrthantus contractus. I wonder how that can be...
A gloomy and chilly late-spring morning in the Hortus Botanicus, but Nottingham Catchfly stood white against the dark soil. Two nights had brought forth in the pretty flower two consecutive rings of stamens, the male principles of flowers, with their pollen. The inset shows them still proud and straight with even a few pollen grains. But to prevent self-pollination our Flower's stamens shrivel on the third day, and it isn't until then that the female principle - those three styles with their purple stigmas appear; in the inset you can just see them peeping out, and they grow out amazingly fast.
The main photo shows the Masculine Shrivels and those proud Feminine Conduits to the flower's ovary. There its ovules will be fertilised by pollen from another flower.
Between 1635 and 1637 about one-seventh of the population of Amsterdam succumbed to the plague. On the initiative of famous Dr Nicolaas Tulp - of Rembrandt's 'Anatomical Lesson' fame - the town council established a Hortus Medicus, later the Hortus Botanicus. That garden was to provide herbal medicine mandated for all the pharmacies of the city. Lists survive of the plants used, and one of these is the inventory compiled by Johannes Snippendaal in 1646; a recent editon of that work also indicates the plants in Dr Tulp's anonymously written Pharmacopoea of 1635.
Today pretty Sweet William, Dianthus barbatus, is said to have no medicinal use. But that was different in the seventeenth century: Abraham Munting (1626-1683), for example, professor of botany in Groningen, besides giving a full description of our bright plant, also has a listing of its uses. Among these he advises a concoction of its ground roots in wine as a medicine againt the plague.
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Mid-February 1696 a plot was to have been executed to kill the King by Jacobites vehemently opposed to the Glorious Revolution (1688) which had brought the Dutch stadtholder and his wife to the English Throne as William III (1650-1702) and Mary II (1677-1694). The plans were discovered, Orange prevailed, and the would-be assassins were made to feel the force of the law.
Mary had sadly died in 1694, so she probably wouldn't have seen these pretty Orange Canary Bell-Flowers which are attested for the gardens of their palace, Hampton Court in 1696.
Today our Bell-Flower is much beloved by gardeners around the Globe. But as endemic wild plants on the Canary Islands they are endangered. Environmental measures are being taken to protect them. William of Orange survived that plot by six years; it is hoped these Bell-Flowers have a longer wild future.
The Hortus has a pleasant little plot with Barberrys from various provenances. Here in the main photo is Darwin's Barberry, discovered by great Charles Darwin in 1835 (see my description: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/17098687398/in/photoli...). It's a bit of an anomaly to see it in blossom in the present snowy weather.
The inset gives the fruit of Wintergreen Barberry. It wasn't scientifically described until the early 1900s. It hails from China. These colors certainly brighten a dark winter's day!
This year the Hortus Botanicus has also planted a very pleasant vegetable garden. One of the plants brightening it even when the weather is the gloom of Spring is the golden yellow flower of Cucurbita pepo, Zucchini or Courgette. The vegetable hails from the Americas but gained general European kitchen favor in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
It's hardly the kind of weather for licking ice-sticks. Though it's bright here in Amsterdam, the wind is very cold. Haven't seen a lot of Hoverflies around yet this Spring...
But here's - I think - tiny Platycheirus clypeatus, but correct me please if you think I'm wrong (first I thought: Melanostoma mellinum). He's feasting on the pollen of a Tulip Cultivar of 2002, Tulipa kaufmanniana 'Ice Stick' in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
The Hortus Botanicus Leiden, nestled in the heart of the city, is a historical gem and a tranquil retreat. Established in 1590, it holds the distinction of being the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, with a rich collection that has grown over four centuries. Visitors can explore the Orangery from 1744, tropical greenhouses from 1938, and a winter garden from 2000, each offering a unique glimpse into the plant kingdom. The garden's commitment to education and conservation is evident through its diverse flora, including exotic species and historical plants like the old Tuliptree from 1716 and the Ginkgo from 1785. It's a place where nature's beauty is preserved and celebrated, providing a serene escape from the bustling city life.
The pretty vegetable garden of the Hortus is made sunny-colorful by beds of French Marigold, Tagetes patula. Olymp caught a Flower's Brightness just before the gloom set in. And Common Greenbottle Fly, Lucilia sericata, gleamed silkily in the Sun.
The ghastly wet weather and gusty winds drove me into the Glass Houses of the Hortus Botanicus. There's a good collection of plants from South Africa there.
Here's Bright Yellow Poker, Kniphofia linearifolia Baker (for another bright orange Kniphovia in the garden outdoors see my earlier www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/36150773033/in/photoli...). It's a foraging place for tiny black Ants, I think from the Tropics, perhaps hitchhiked here on traveling plants.
This wonderful grassy Wood-rush indeed gleams and sparkles purplish in the Sunlight. And there's probably some truth to the derivation of Luzula from a form of the Latin Lux, light. But nobody can narrow down the reason for its name more precisely. David Gledhill in his great The Names of Plants is quite right to say: Luzula is 'an ancient name of obscure meaning'.
There are at least four theories. The first is that this Wood-rush gleams in the moonlight like a glow worm, a Lucciola in Italian; another idea is that the flowers and their sheaths (ca. a mere 4-5 mm) dew-wet sparkle in the morning sunlight; third advocates claim the anthers and pistil look like lamp wicks, and hence the connection to light; and finally some have said that the pith of Wood-rush has been used to fashion exactly those candle or lamp wicks. I haven't been able to find any confirmation that Wood-rush pith was indeed used that way except for people claiming it. I'm also sceptical about the 'look-like-candle-wick' assertion. That leaves two explanations. It seems to me a bit far-fetched - having often seen glow worms myself - to put them into the equation; their light is far brighter than the gleam of Wood-rush in the moonlight. Which leaves as most likely the idea that our Plant in flower sparkles in the sunlight, as I myself could see this morning.