TREE LIFE
JUNE 2002
As before please confirm with any of the committee members that the scheduled outings and walks will actually take place. See the back page for phone numbers.
The annual subs were due on 1st April. If you haven’t already paid, please do so soon! ($400)
MASHONALAND CALENDAR
Saturday 1st June. Botanic Garden Walk. Meet in the car park of the Botanic Garden at 10.45 for 11 a.m. where we will meet Tom and begin with Leguminosae, subfamily Papilionoideae.
Sunday 16th June. Our thanks go to Mrs. Liz Dudley for providing this month’s venue. It is safe and close to Harare.
Saturday 22nd June. Mark’s next walk will be at the Greystone Park Nature Reserve. To get there from the Borrowdale road turn right into Harare Drive and continue for 4 km, then turn left into Gaydon Road. After the municipal offices on the hill and on the down slope turn right into Halford. If you reach Ettington Road on the left you have gone about 500 metres too far. The reserve is about 200 metres down Halford road where we will meet at 2.30 p.m.
Saturday 6th July. Botanic Garden walk.
Sunday 21st July. Sanganayi Creek in the Banket area.
Saturday 27th July. Mark’s Walk.
MATABELELAND CALENDAR
Sunday 9th June. There will be a morning visit of the Matabeleland Branch to Maureen Norton’s garden in Newton West, Bulawayo. Maureen has a range of indigenous trees growing there, many of which have had a new lease of life with the recent rains. We will meet at her house at 9.00.
TREE SEEDLINGS FOR SCHOOLS
Schools, mainly in Honde Valley, Chimanimani, Chipinge and Harare are involved in a Bird Awareness Programme with BirdLife Zimbabwe. This year the project focuses on habitat improvement for people and birds and we are providing some tree seedlings from our new Honde Plant nursery. So far we have not a big range of species of trees so we are appealing to members of the Tree Society to offer us their surplus tree or shrub or herb seedlings for this worthwhile exercise.
At the two Nyanga schools, Acacia abyssinica and trees for shade at the car parks are required. One of the 15-year-old students said to me “I would love to see those flat-topped Acacias I see at Punch Rock growing at our School”.
If you have contributions, please phone me at 490208, 302655 (W) or 883316 (H). Leslee Maasdorp, Education Manager, BirdLife Zimbabwe.
BOTANIC GARDEN WALK: 4 MAY 2002
The subject was, for the last time, the difficult family, Rubiaceae.
Firstly, Psychotria kirkii – this is really too small to qualify as a tree and is not in Coates Palgrave (1983). Like the two common species of Pavetta, it has dark spots, which are reportedly bacterial nodules, in the lamina of the leaf that may be readily seen by holding the leaf up to the light. It is a fairly small woody species that often suckers and has striking red fruits.
Rothmannia fischeri. Photo: Ian Riddell
Next, we looked at another granite kopjie species, Rothmannia fischeri. An interesting feature of the genus Rothmannia, which we observed in all three species of Rothmannia seen today, is that although the leaves are normally opposite, sometimes the leaves occur in threes. In more detail the extra (third) leaf occurs where the branches fork.
Rothmannia manganjae is a very pretty species that is confined in Zimbabwe to the eastern districts. Its flowers are white with pink spots and with its dark green glossy leaves it makes an attractive garden plant.
Rothmannia urcelliformis is a forest understorey tree, again from the eastern districts. It has large green fruit, which takes 2 years to mature.
Heinsenia diervilleoides (which used to be in the genus Aulacocalyx) (Miniature bells) looks like a Rothmannia and sometimes has the leaf arrangement in threes like a Rothmannia. It has lovely bell-shaped white flowers and occurs in forest understorey where it may attain 15 m. It occurs in Chirinda Forest at an altitude of c.1100-1200 m.
On to the genus Coffea, Tom mentioned how the species Coffea ligustroides, a rainforest species, has been split into two: Coffea ligustroides sensu stricto, which occurs in the Chirinda Forest, and Coffea mufindiensis, which occurs in the Vumba. These differ on technical characters in the flowers.
Coffea zanguebariae is a species that occurs in the Zambezi Valley. Coffea salvatrix occurs in only one forest at the Rusitu River where it is quite common. In addition, there is Coffea racemosa, which is quite frequent in the SE lowveld and cultivated coffee (Coffea arabica presumably) that occurs as an escape in the Vumba.
Finally, we looked at Tarenna zimbabwensis. Tom explained that this occurs in forest outliers in the eastern districts and is also quite common in rocky places in the Matopos. We saw this frequently on the Besna Kobila trip and its character of “praying hands” was very obvious.
Once again, I’d like to thank Tom for so much of interest. Next month the subject will be the Leguminosae, subfamily Papilionoideae.
Mark Hyde
CRAZY SEASON II
Today is the 14th of May 2002, and on a trip out to Norton this morning I noted extensive flushing of Msasa (Brachystegia spiciformis). In fact, I believe the majority of trees were flushing, and quite clearly this was not the beginning of it for many trees had the bright, shiny, new-green leaves that follow the splendour of the colour.
Some trees on the hillsides around the dam wall at Lake Mac were in full flush, but most were flushing only on the uppermost small branches and twigs. In most cases the new leaves were too high up to see whether insect attack or some other cause was responsible for this out-of-season flushing, but I found one large specimen with a crown that was within reach, and there was no sign of anything untoward that could have brought on the flushing. But guess what I did find on this tree? Masses of new flowers! In mid-May???
Lyn Mullin
THE FATE OF THE TREE OF TÉNÉRÉ
In Tree Life No. 234 I wrote about The Tree of Ténéré and queried whether that one lonely specimen in the Sahel was still alive; and thanks to Fay Robertson for passing on this snippet from an annotated bibliography of Acacia tortilis.
‘Anon. (The tree of the Ténéré desert is dead)
L’Arbre du Ténéré est mort. Bois et Forets des Tropiques (1974) No. 153: 61-65.
Records and illustrates with photos the destruction in 1973 of the famous solitary acacia tree (probably Acacia raddiana (Acacia tortilis ssp. radiana) that was a celebrated landmark on one of the caravan routes across this sand desert in the southern Sahara (NE Niger). The roots were found to reach a water table c.35 m below the surface. The tree, perhaps 300 years old was apparently the last survivor of acacias that once grew along a wadi when the desert was less parched than it is today.’
Ian Riddell
The Akee
The article that follows appeared in Gourmet magazine, March 2000 under the heading A Revealing Fruit. Actually, I think the Akee fruit looks remarkably like the fruit of the Pawn-broker Tree Excoecaria bussei, though the latter belongs to the Euphorbiaceae and the Akee to the Sapindaceae. A well-known relative of the Akee is the litchi, Litchi chinensis. In West Africa the Akee is an important tropical timber; its generic name is Blighia sapida. We too have a representative of the genus, this being Blighia unijugata, which was looked at on the BOTANIC GARDEN WALK of 5 April 1994, Mark Hyde’s commentary in Tree Life being
“In the Chirinda Forest section we first saw Blighia unijugata, a pinnate-leaved tree occurring at Chirinda and along the Rusitu River.”
Coates Palgrave’s Trees of Southern Africa describes Blighia unijugata fruit as a “3-lobed capsule, rather pear-shaped, up to 2.5 to 3 x 2.5 to 3 cm, becoming bright pink when mature … each lobe finally splits, the valves curl backwards and form a distinctive, twisted, contorted, wrinkled, woody mass; the shiny dark brown to black seeds have a yellow cup-shaped arillode round the base”. One can see the similarity to the Akee except the Akee bears considerably more flesh – that arillode.
Incidentally, the article below mentions Captain Bligh and in Sapindaceae and Mutiny on the Bounty in Tree Life 249 we were told that the genus was in fact named after Captain Bligh.
Ian Riddell
A Revealing Fruit
Unripe, the scarlet, pear-shaped Akee harbors hypoglycin, a deadly poison. Ripe, the fruit “yawns” into three sections, revealing shiny, round seeds atop crisp, light-colored flesh. And cooked? The ripe flesh is edible and delicious and looks like scrambled eggs, with a mild, nutty flavor.
Captain Bligh of the H.M.S. Bounty introduced akees (related to lichees and native to West Africa) to the West Indies in the late 18th century. Jamaicans, who distinguish between soft yellow “butter” Akee and hard, cream-colored “cheese” Akee, love the fruit with salted codfish – ask for “Akee and salt fish.”
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration bans imports, but a few trees grow in yards in southern Florida, and many Jamaican groceries sell canned or frozen Akee under the table.
David Karp
BAOBABS IN MY SOUP
By Lyn Mullin (Continued)
Finally, I was able to find one more tree measured last century, again by David Livingstone, this time during his Zambezi Expedition in 1858. In September of that year he wrote in his Journal: “We have wooded at Shiramba about four miles above the spot pointed out as the Great House. All is deserted now and we saw nothing except a small brown antelope. While the men were cutting down a lignum vitae tree I walked a little way to the southwest and found a baobab, which MacRae and I, measuring at about three feet from the ground, found to be 72 feet in circumference [21.95 m]. It was hollow and had a good wide doorway to it. The space inside was 9 feet in diameter [2.74 m] and about 25 feet high [7.62 m]. A lot of bats clustered about the top of the roof and I noticed for the first time that this tree has bark inside as well as out.”
Livingstone’s figure cannot be accepted without question, however. In his narrative he wrote of a magnificent baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside as well as without (p. 40). Later, on page 53, he wrote, “Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size and bark coloured like Egyptian syenite, is the burly baobab. It often makes the other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison. A hollow one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference [22.56 m], another was 84 [25.60 m], and some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet [30.48 m). And he contradicted his early calculations by continuing, “Their great size induced some to imagine that they afforded evidence that the flood of Noah never took place. On careful examination of many hundreds in the forests, and some of which had sprung up in the floors of old stone houses, the number of concentric rings convince us that even the very largest specimens of this remarkably soft-wooded tree are not 500 years old.”
John Kirk measured the tree on 25 January 1860, “A long walk yesterday, no game and few plants. The same today, up a few miles, measured the large hollow baobab at Shiramba. It is 12 of my fathoms, each 5 feet 11 inches. The tree’s circumference equals 73 feet [22.24 m] or the diameter nearly 24 feet [7.32 m]. The diameter of the hollow inside was 9 feet [2.74 m].
It would be interesting to hear Livingstone and Kirk on the subject of the rate of growth of baobabs now, for in 1965 I measured the tree at the same three feet from the ground as Livingstone, and found it to be 73.95 feet [22.54 m]. Thus, in over 100 years, it can have increased at most two feet (0.61 m] in circumference. In 1965 there was still a colony of bats in the tree, and some exceedingly active bees.
[Comment: See ‘Doctor Livingstone’s Monogram, I Presume’, a contribution to Rowan Cashel’s book by Quentin Keynes. It is interesting that G.L. Guy made no mention of Livingstone’s monogram on the inside of the tree. He measured this tree 8 years after Keynes found the monogram, but obviously did not see it.]How fast do baobabs grow, then?
The only definite age we have is a Carbon-14 date done by Dr FR Swart at the University College of Zimbabwe. He took a sample from the centre of a 15-foot-diameter tree [4.57 m], and made its age 1010 years ±100; another sample, 3 feet [0.91 m] from the centre, was 740 years ±100. In other words, for the first 270 years of its life the tree grew fast, reaching a diameter of 7 feet [2.13 m]. It took 740 years more to reach 15 feet [4.57 m], which gives some slim basis for calculating age. The tree grew 8 feet [2.44 m] in diameter in 740 years, and treating it as a true cylinder, it grew 0.1135 inches [2.88 mm] in diameter annually.
Livingstone’s tree at Shiramba grew a maximum 1.95 feet [594 mm] in girth in 108 years, or 0.62 feet [189 mm] in diameter, and increment of 0.07 inches [1.78 mm] per annum, which is even slower. A mean of 0.09 inches [2.29 mm] per annum gives an age of 4266 years for a tree of 32 feet [9.75 m] in diameter.
To return now to the tree measured by Livingstone near Gootsa Pan, this seems to have shrunk some 57 inches [1.45 m] of circumference. This is about 5 percent of the total, an acceptable figure in the light of other figures quoted below, where several of the trees have diminished by over 4 percent of their girth in 1931.
There is concrete evidence that baobabs do not grow at all for long periods of drought; in fact, they actually shrink, as proved by 17 trees in a sample plot near Messina, in South Africa. These trees, first measured by Dr P.C. de Villiers, now a Professor at the University of Stellenbosch, have been measured at intervals since then. De Villiers painted a ring at breast height round each tree, and subsequent measurements have been made at the same points each time.
The figures for three trees are given below in centimetres of girth at breast height:
| Tree No. | 1931 | 1938 | 1946 | 1953 | 1966 |
| 2 | 614.7 | 614.7 | 596.9 | 619.8 | 602.0 |
| 7 | 256.5 | 274.3 | 276.9 | 320.0 | 320.0 |
| 15 | 622.3 | 614.7 | 561.3 | 612.1 | 596.9 |
These rates of growth plotted against the rainfall for those years, show clearly that baobabs are very sensitive to drought years.
Studying them, reading the descriptions of early travellers, and surveying the large number of dead and dying trees in the Limpopo Valley, one is forced to conclude either that current rainfall shortages areas aggravated as they have been for the past 2000 years, or that overgrazing, with the consequent erosion and fast runoff, have prevented sufficient water from soaking in.
Anyway, until we can prove the existence of annual rings, the ages of baobabs must remain speculation, but I think we can say that they do live at least over 4000 years. It will, therefore, be doubly interesting to look for several baobabs recorded by Thomas Baines in the Limpopo Valley on the last of his journeys in 1871.
Between the junction of the Shashi and Limpopo rivers and his crossing of the Limpopo at Baines’ Drift, he and his companions measured five trees along their route varying from 40 to 63 feet in girth [12.19 to 19.20 m]. If the trees are still alive they are probably on an existing track, because there has been so little development in the area in the last 90 years that there will have been no call for the construction of surveyed roads.
Again, Baines kept meticulous records of latitude calculated from stellar observations, though he seems to have deserted his old favourites, Alpha Crucis and Alpha Lyra, for Alpha Eridani, Canopus, and Fomalhaut. Where physical features, such as a river junction, can be tied to his observations, he seems to have been less than five miles [8 km] out in every case.
Some, at least, of the trees were measured by stretching the traveller’s arms around them at shoulder height, but Baines knew his own fathom, and very likely he checked those of his companions. He wrote “10 times the span of my extended arms or perhaps nearly 50 feet [15.24 m]”, while of a nearby tree “Gee found that it measured 8 times the length of his extended arms, and 3 feet over, or probably 30 feet [9.14 m] in circumference”, so he obviously knew that Gee’s span was less than his own. Later he gave definite measurements of 61 and 63 feet in girth [18.59 and 19.20 m]. This was when they were with wagons, so possibly they had a tape with them.
It seems possible, too, that the tree measured by de Waal in Cecil Rhodes’s presence in 1890 on the Pakwe River can also be traced today. It is likely that Rhodes’s party camped at ‘Biles Pool’, so named by Baines, which was on that river. It seems to have been one of the regular night camps after Baines’s time.
To be continued
TREE LEGENDS
From earliest times legends associated with trees have come down to us. Here are two by Gertrude Ordman extracted with thanks from Trees in South Africa Oct-Dec 1965.
1. Legend of the Carob or Locust Tree
This is a Talmudic legend found in the countries where the Hebrew people settled. The version of this legend with which we are most familiar is the story of Rip van Winkle written by Washington Irving in the United States of America in 1820. You will recall that Rip van Winkle sleeps for 20 years and is amazed on waking to find the progress that has been made during his long slumber. In the Talmud version, Chomi, a young Rabbi comes upon an old man planting the seed of a Carob tree at the side of the road. He smiles at the old man for planting a seed that will need at least thirty years to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. By that time the planter will surely be dead. The old man looks up at the young Rabbi and says, “I am not planting for myself. I have eaten carob fruits that other men have planted, so why may not I do the like for other men. The sons of my sons will eat of this and thank me”. Soon after that Chomi becomes tired and lies down in the woods to rest. He awakens seventy years later to find the carob tree mature and bearing fruit and himself an aged man quite unknown to the people about him.
It may interest you to know that the pods of the Carob tree were the “husks” of the Jesus parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:16) – “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him!”
The “locusts” eaten by John the Baptist (Mathew, 3:4) are believed by many students of the Bible to have been the fruits of the Carob tree and not locust insects. The mistake arose when a translator of the Bible substituted the Hebrew “G” for the letter “R” in the word “cherew” which turned the meaning of the word from “carob” to “locust”.
2. Legend of the Willow-pattern Plate
A favourite design for blue china plates, copying the original blue china of Nanking, was introduced into England in the 18th century when the craze for things Chinese was at its height. Willow-pattern porcelain is still used today.
In the original design the famous Willow tree stands at one end of a lake crossed by a wooden bridge. To the right of the plate is a mandarin’s mansion two stories in height indicating the rank and wealth of the owner. In the foreground a pavilion may be seen; in the background an orange tree and to the right of the pavilion a peach tree in full bloom. At the other end of the bridge near the Willow tree is a humble cottage.
In the willow-pattern three figures always appear on the bridge – two young lovers being chased by the mandarin with a whip. The lovers are also shown in a boat at one corner of the lake. At the top of the pattern is an island. A story has been woven around this design – the Story of the Willow Pattern Plate. Li-chi, the only daughter of a mandarin loves Chang, her father’s secretary, a young man living on the island. The mandarin one day overhearing them making vows of love under the peach tree, forbids their marriage. Li-chi is imprisoned in the cottage near the Willow tree.
There the poor girl languishes writing love poems to Chang, smuggling them across the lake in cocoanut shells with tiny ivory sails, telling him how she longs for freedom that she may see again the peach tree bloom. Disconsolate Chang, wandering on the other side of the lake, reads a message on one of the sails: “Do not wise farmers gather the fruits they fear may be stolen?’ Chang understands. He must rescue Li-chi from captivity. Disguised as a travelling priest he crosses the bridge and the lovers flee hastily. Before they are across the bridge the mandarin is after them. Chang clutches Li-chi’s jewel box and the angry father brandishes his whip. But the lovers are out of reach. They have taken a boat and are crossing the lake to find safety in the pagoda on the further shore. Their hopes to live there in peace are shattered when the house burns down and both perish in the fire.
But look again at the Willow-pattern plate. Above the Willow tree, just as the leaves are being shed, you will see two turtle-doves in full flight – the spirits of Chang and Li-chi rewarded by the Gods for their fidelity.
The Weeping Willow tree has from earliest times been associated with sorrow and regarded as a symbol of grief for unrequited love or the loss of a mate, a sad tree from the branches of which those who have lost their love make mourning garlands.
The Willow was the tree of the Bible on which, as the Psalms tell us, the captive Israelites are said to have hung their harps in a sign of mourning. Shakespeare indicates the sadness symbolised by the Willow tree in Act IV of Othello when Desdemona sings:
“The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree
Sing all a green willow:
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee
Sing willow, willow, willow,
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmured:
her moans
Sing willow, willow, willow,
Her salt tears fell from her, and softened the
stones;
Sing willow, willow, willow;
Sing all a green willow must be my garland”.
Can it be that Tit Willow the well-known mournful song in The Mikado is based on this song of Desdemona?
OOZING WITH NECTAR: THE NECTARY
Like airborne tankers, bees don’t exactly drink nectar; they just full up with it and transport it back to the hive where other worker bees make it into honey. On each flower visit it is the nectaries the honeybee seeks out for nectar. Rather than an easily recognisable organ, such as a flower petal or an ovary, a nectary is simply a small group of cells that secretes a sugary solution. A nectary may be no more than a secretory surface, but in some plant species nectar is secreted by special glandular knobs or fine hairs.
All plants have two plumbing systems: water is transported upwards through the xylem from the roots to the leaves, and a sugary supply of energy is transported from the leaves, where it is manufactured, to all other parts of the plant via the phloem. Depending on which plumbing system makes the greatest contribution to the nectar, the nectar can contain anything from 5% to 50% of sugar in varying combinations of sucrose, glucose, maltose and fructose. Bees prefer the nectar sugary and thick bumblebees are less fussy, but birds can only cope with watery solutions.
Nectaries can be situated practically anywhere on a plant. Some plant species, for example the maples and limes, have nectaries inside the flowers. Other species, such as the Black Cherry, the Madrone and the Acacias, have nectaries on the outside of the flowers, or on leaves or stems. Species like oak and willow, which are wind pollinated, have no nectaries but are still visited by foraging bees, this time attracted by the sweet honey dew excreted by phloem-sucking aphids. For species with nectaries, their location on the plant is important in an ecological context, because when honeybees forage from floral nectaries, they also help with pollination. Some extra-floral nectaries on the other hand are visited by ants, which in turn keep the plant free of harmful insects.
Reproduced from Trees: the Journal of the International Tree Foundation Vol. 61 (2001)
A VERY BIG THANK YOU to all the members who made donations to the Society in response to my article in last month’s Tree Life. So far we have received a startling additional $10 000, which is a considerable boost to our financial position. As agreed at the A.G.M. we shall not be writing letters individually, but the Committee does very much appreciate this generosity.
Mark Hyde
IN RETROSPECT Lyn Mullin
Continued…
THE FORGOTTEN BOTANIST
An extract from an article by D. Hagen, first published in PELTOPHORUM No.14, appeared in TREE LIFE No. 138 (August 1991) under the heading “Joseph Dombey, Botanist during the Reign of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette”.
Joseph Dombey [1742-1796] carried out his botanical work in the period preceding the French Revolution. His travels included a lot of work in Peru and Chile, where he collected formidable herbaria. However, he always collected doubly because Spain demanded half the collection. It is said that Dombey meticulously kept to this bargain. It so happened that, in the 1780s, he returned with two ships of collections – one for Spain and one for France. The Spanish ship was wrecked at sea, and crew and cargo were never heard of again. On arriving in France, the Spanish demanded their half. France conceded, electing not to evoke the ire of Spain. Now enters the scene a very rich, intelligent, and influential Frenchman, Monsieur L’Héritier, a well-known botanical enthusiast in his own right. He decided to save the Dombey herbarium by stealing away with the whole collection clandestinely. Due to his important social position he was not questioned when he and his cargo boarded ship from France to England. Most remarkably, he had contacted Sir Joseph Banks, who lent sanctuary to the Dombey collection, and, in fact, started studying the specimens. Sir Joseph also most hospitably provided facilities for L’Héritier in his splendid home in London. Some years later L’Héritier slipped Dombey’s collection back into France where, I understand, it still is – of course, fully studied and classified.
Joseph Dombey was sent to the new Republic of America by the scientific fraternity later in the 1780s. His ship foundered and limped into harbour at Guadeloupe. There he boarded another ship to America, but this ship was conquered by pirates, who hoped to obtain a large sum of money for the release of their precious hostage. But nothing came of this, and Joseph Dombey was thrown into a dismal, dark and damp, stone prison on the Island of Montserrat, West Indies. There he languished in abject misery, severely maltreated, and largely abandoned. He died totally forgotten and forsaken in that jail.
Other interesting contemporaries of Dombey were F.A. Mesmer (1734-1815), pioneer hypnotist and psychologist: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American statesman, scientist of electricity fame, and author whose works were avidly read by all naturalists; Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), philosopher-turned-botanist; and August Pyramus, the patriarch of the famous botanical dynasty of the de Candolle family.
[Comment 2000: Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800) was the botanist who named the genus Eucalyptus, which was first collected by Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) and Daniel Cart Solander (1733-1782) in Botany Bay (present-day Sydney, Australia) in 1770. However, it was not Banks’s specimen of Eucalyptus gummifera [=Corymbia gummifera] that was named first, but a specimen of Eucalyptus obliqua, collected by David Nelson in 1777 on Bruny Island, off southern Tasmania.And Joseph Dombey is not completely forgotten. His name lives on in the genus Dombeya, named in his honour by the botanist Antonio José Cavanilles (1745-1804), but it is a little sad that Dombeya had to be a genus from Africa across to the Mascarene Islands, instead of from South America where Dombey made his great collections.)
To he continued
ANNOUNCING THE NEW COATES PALGRAVE!
The third edition of Trees of Southern Africa has been fully updated by Meg Coates Palgrave and is due to be published in October 2002.
There are 3 editions:
- Sponsors (ISBN 1 86872 7661) – limited to 26 copies (lettered from A-Z) fully bound in leather with matching slipcase; purchaser’s (or specified) name to be handwritten at the front. Price: R 3750 (incl. VAT):
- Collectors’ (ISBN 1 86872 767 X) – limited to 100 copies: half bound in leather with matching slipcase: purchaser’s (or specified) name to be hand written at the front. Price: R2000 (incl. VAT)
- Standard (ISBN 1 86872 389 5) – subscriber’s names will be featured in the book if orders are received by 24 June 2002. Price: R 295.95 (incl. VAT)
Deadline for names to be featured in Sponsors, Collectors and Subscribers’ edition: 24 June 2002. Some of the features of the new edition include: all text fully revised and updated from cover to cover to include all southern African species and reflecting all new classifications; new distribution maps throughout. New, reworked key based on leaf (not flower) characteristics; new leaf drawings where required and for all new species.
Orders can be sent to: Joel Thosago, Struik Publishers, P O Box 277, Rivonia 2128 Tel: +27 11 280 3257 Fax: +27 11 280 3268 e-mail: Joelt@struik.co.za
