16. 2019.5.20 – The following plants were in bud in July to indicate a September flowering. North of this location is a large area with a lot of mirabilis and only one lot of retusa and again the retusa does not share the same space as any mirabilis. I need to find a word for that as something like sympatric or co-occurring does not quite fit. Haworthia habitats are probably characterised by their mixed-upness :). Small scale fragmentation. I will add a picture here of a habitat that is a small narrow fringe of exposed shale – the place used to house floribunda until under intensive pasturage everything was grazed away. Across the river is an area where there was a retusoid that was in short shrubby vegetation now being encroached by taller bush. It is nothing like it was 40 years before. Changes like this can be seen in the span of human life but it is still very difficult to assess just how much does change.

The missing word seems to be contiguous – the populations may come so close as to have a common border but not randomly mixing. Otherwise populations may be in close proximity. There are many such inexplicable complexities that we gloss over in trying to understand nature. This mystery I am trying to explain is not going to be resolved in the next post or several thereafter – it will take all the pictures. By which time we will have forgotten where we started?

17. 2019.5.20 – This is from populations still further north and northwest of Heidelberg taken from before the days of digital camera – sadly. Mirabiloids seem to be absent and so is floribunda. But this is missing from the whole argument and tack … it seems I have not stated, or not states strongly enough, that Haworthia retusa is a single species incorporating the main elements H. turgida, H. mirabilis, H. mutica, H. pygmaea and H. emelyae. I am forced to include H. floribunda although that then leads on to many more seemingly improbable connections. What we have is a single gene pool represented by a large series of populations broken up on the basis of geographic space, local geology, aspect, slope and altitude. A major driver is two flowering periods among the populations; one is early spring and the other late summer early autumn. A significant point is that each population is discrete and seldom indeed can we identify a freely mixing population of two different species. While a whole additional set of names may be needed for the enthusiast and collector, it does not actually make sense to generate Latin binomials that just touch on some of the variability seen within populations and between. Five names is quite enough for practical purposes while for a collector or grower many more are useful. For a strictly botanical record one may be a true reflection of the state?

18. 2019.5.21 – From immediately south of Tradouw Pass. This population puzzled me for years. Inside the pass itself in 1970, were cliffs clothed with turgida retusa. Then the road was re-cut and the cliff faces destroyed. Westwards was the road to Zuurbraak with steep riverine vegetation. These cliffs were shale and could have held many mysteries. They were cut away too. I am not sure thus just where H. mirabilis may have been in the vicinity but these plants are practically certainly a consequence of a hybridization between the mirabiloids and the retusoids. These pictures were taken in March when the plants were flowering. Retusa’s flower in the spring.

Jaap Viljoen: Bruce what would you call them? Due to farming activities there are not many left.

Bruce Bayer: Jaap – I am sure someone has coined a name for this all ready? AND I cannot deny it is very difficult to answer the question. Botany does not provide for this. I could say H.mirabilisXretusa, or H. retusa Tradouw. My suggestion would be that the Haworthia community through one of the Societies (where Aloe, Haworthiad and others have been very tardy in supporting any suggestion of such an idea) just concede that the formal botanical Latin systems does not serve common interest, and establish a secondary naming system. Use that existing coined name but dot not fool anyone into thinking it means anything more than a collector item. As I recently posted – it is just not sensible to use a formal Latin botanical name because most of the plant forms found in this population can be seen in many other populations across the whole southern Cape from Caledon to Great Brak – and north of the Langeberg. We can’t live with our head in the sand about this issue forever?

Jaap’s question about a name for these things is important and just what this group about. For the collector, the name is connected to what the plant LOOKS like. To the botanist it is where the plant is in the history and evolutionary pathway, what its DNA is or tells them and perhaps a lot more depending on some discipline or other in the subject. This is another set of pictures from S Tradouw – same place as previous but taken in September. I have another set of 34 pictures of seed grown plants and no two plants look the same. Perhaps members can explain to me what single name is going to serve a meaningful purpose. Nearly every single population presents this problem. What riles me about the DNA sequencing I have been involved in is that single specimens are taken to represent “species” in a sequencing project based on an existing classification. Perhaps someone has done a study where sequencing has been done on a raw set of unnamed specimens replicated from one population as well as representing populations across the gamut of the group in question? I have yet to learn of it.

A very pertinent question by my friend Jaap – what do we call plants from S Tradouw – when no two plants are the same? It raises the question of the definition of the species and the establishment of identity. In the present informal systems where commercial growers and also the very highly skilled observers like M Hayashi have great expertise, there will be a name – but that name will not fit all the variants in the population nor the endless number of variants that will emerge among seed grown plants. In the present formal system it should be H. mirabilisXretusa and the locality name should be added, as there are other such hybrids (single or in populations). In a system based on a more rational definition than is currently used, I think it should simply be H. retusa!

Jaap Viljoen: As I expressed my views before about all the discussion on names, one thing will never changed. You can give a Haworthia any name you like, but the one name that is factual is the locality. If you want to call these plants a mirabilis or retusa, and it makes you happy it is up to you. If you want to make all the so called botanist happy, do so. These plants will always be known as the base of the Tradouw Pass population. However they will all be extinct very shortly.

Bruce Bayer: The problem here is that the vast majority of botanists do not know what taxonomic botanists do. Taxonomy is seldom good science and modern taxonomy revolves entirely around DNA sequencing that my experience suggests is far short of ideal. While I agree with Jaap that locality is so vital for anyone who wants to know about the plants. For a botanist the name H. retusa would be best and they would additionally need to know what the relationship is between the typical retusa element and the mirabilis elements. Note that the practice of using the name H. retusa typica fell away many years ago in the favour of H, retusa retusa – both trinomials!

20. 2019.5.23 – The next pictures are a consequence of Jannie Groenewald’s (H. groenewaldii fame) activity and I am truly grateful to a remarkable young man fully absorbed in the wonder of plant life. These will be from 4 populations SE of Tradouw. The first is mirabiloid flowering autumn. The others are retusoids (flowering spring) in the context of sandstone populations and populations in the shale, clay and even limestone southwards. It is worth noting that the habitats are near identical and yet occupied by either of the ‘species’ and never both.

Jaap Viljoen: Again, I cannot help to smile about the Groenewaldii population. Mostly to Jannies frustration when we visit the site and I continually asked him to show me a real Groenewaldii. The percentage of plants of which the dots cover more than 50% of the leaves is so small, that the population could hardly been called Groenewaldii. With all the visitors these dotted plants become even less. Viva to the Jannie Groenewald haworthia population in Buffeljags.

Bruce Bayer: Yes Jaap, the fact is we looked across the valley and I said these plants must be there too – and they are and spots are very rare. But there is much more to those spots too.

21. 2019.5.24 – Another population from SE Tradouw. Note the presence of plants with rounded leaf tips and dark coloration. Again huge variation and as was done in the days of Smith and Von Poellnitz, there are the ingredients for several species!

22. 2019.5.25 – Mulling about how to proceed! Past experience is that it is difficult to get readers to keep all the variables and all history in mind while trying oneself to do that. I have posted 2 sets of retusoids from SE Tradouw. Here is another. I will forego the next 3 because, while they tell the story of variability, they add nothing new. But what is significant is this – with these south of Tradouw populations, there are another 22 very similar localities/habitats in all, separated by various distances from 200m to a few kilometres, 22 populations drawn from 3 species. What has happened to keep the species apart? Ponder this while thinking just how coherent family, genus, species distributions are worldwide? Locally too. The guesses we make about seed distribution and spread do not seem to amount to much.  

Flowering time. I have said that this is a significant driver WITHIN the retusa complex. The mirabiloids and floribundoids flower in late summer/early autumn, while retusa/mutica/pygmaea flower in spring. Nevertheless, despite this difference, one finds hybrids between these elements despite expectation to the contrary. I have seen hybrids of floribunda in the wild with retusa (typical retusa and turgida), pygmaea and mirabilis. In one remarkable instance that also demonstrates a quite amazing inexplicable spatial separation, mutica and mirabilis are separate and confined to immediately adjacent areas, of exactly the same rock, soil type and corresponding general vegetation (contiguous). The same was seen in such absolutely adjacent mirabilis and retusa. Not even extending further into what appears to be identical terrain. There was a hybrid on the point of meeting in each case, despite gross differences in flowering time. I observed this hybridization with H. floribunda and H. mirabilis too, but at least they flower at the same time.

A similar case with Haworthiopsis pungens and H. scabra. H. pungens confined to a quartzitic and pebbly slope with minimal associated vegetation. About 75 meters away, a single cubic boulder of conglomerate about 1m width and depth, in dense proteoid vegetation.  On top of this were several plants of H. scabra and several obvious hybrids where H. pungens was the other parent.

There are populations such as Kransriviermond, the one I mentioned S Heidelberg, and the one at Tradouw that seem inarguably to be “hybrid”. There are many similar cases that strongly suggest such “hybridization” that is really more likely to be a recombination of diverging elements of the same species. It has clearly happened in the past, and often too. Other observations have been of odd flowers outside of the expected flowering windows of the species. Remember the plants are self sterile. Generally. I have had plants that are self-fertile and produce viable seed. 

23. 2019.5.28 – Moving a little further west at Tradouw there are many mirabilis populations that will no doubt get a species name. Just how beats me because no two plants are the same across all the populations. This area is probably the oldest and highest remnant of an old sea bed? Steven will have to explain the geology of the S Cape for us.

Reviewing all these Tradouw pictures leads me to say … I am not trying to prove anything. I am just pointing to an end point of 80 years of questioning the identity of these amazing plants. My conclusion is that these Retusoid things are but one species and botany would be better off if someone competent seriously undertook to truly find out where species stop and start. Retusa, mirabilis, mutica, pygmaea are unquestionably one species and the lesser like wimii, breueri, vincentii, jakubii, bobii, esterhuizenii are not necessary to even consider as they are but variants within a much greater complex. While Groenewaldii is a central binder to them all in a different land form. Elizeae and some other unnamed single elements are highly problematic.

Lawrence Loucka: When you say the lesser names “do not figure at all” do you mean they are or are not part of the single species?

Bruce Bayer: I mean that it is just not necessary to even consider that they are anything but variants within a much greater complex.

24. 2019.5.30 – Bear in mind when looking at this set of mirabiloids (map location 5). Truer retusoids on near identical habitats fall away of these SE of Tradouw. The green smaller spinier retusoids (caespitosa) are in the sandstone Langeberg Mountains to the north and stop (as far known) at Tradouw Pass to the north. There are only a few populations of the clumping cliff dweller south that continue west. This is the upper drainage area of the Buffeljagsriver. What we are looking at is a series of mirabiloids that have swallowed up the retusoid form. The great variability must bear this out. The summer rainfall flowering seems to be a dominant character. A curious observation is that this area seems to have never been explored for succulent plants either in the mid last century when collectors were so busy – or in more recent times. There are no aloes, gasterias, euphorbias, crassulas, stapeliads, or even mesembs to speak of.

25. 2019.5.30 – Still south of Tradouw – what an amazing array of some of the forms here – and strangely they do not occupy the whole area. So there is quite a vast seemingly suitable habitat with only a small piece of it considered livable for the plants.

26. 2019.5.31 MBB7917 – This S Tradouw area is a wonder – I have many more pictures from this confined population. How my taxonomist friends accommodate this variation in their wondrous ways is above me.

Lawrence was with me and he might have more pictures = perhaps not this specific population. And I’m not done with local variation by a very long shot. Do note the morning dew and the flower buds in November.

27. 2019.6.1 MBB7918 flowering in January. The habitat has a much grassier element and the clay texture was indescribably different. The plants are more cryptic and less attractive too. Same general map area 5, south of Tradouw.

  28. 2019.6.2 – Still south of Tradouw and another population. I find it very difficult to leave pictures out. Some of the plants are clumping, some have shiny smooth leaves, others tubercled. One plant was even distichous – it has two huge flower stalks so it is not juvenile. Some plants show the floribunda-like flattening of the leaf ends, with slight twist. Still 5 populations of these “mirabiloids” to go.

29. 2019.6.3 MBB7955 – Still south of Tradouw observed flowering in November and February. Plants very abundant locally and note the different colour and density of the clay. Retusoid mirabilis?

This really is an important image because it brings to mind the whole problem of what is termed the “typological” approach. Names are always attached to a single type specimen creating a crude and false belief that a species can be adequately represented by a single individual. This has completely bedeviled classification in Haworthia where for example a name like “magnifica” can even imagined to exist as a distinctly separate group with the general qualities of the original specimen so-named. The exact same applies to this illustration of H. retusa.

30. 2019.6.3 – Yet another set again with incredible variation and seemingly setting itself apart from the others in the general area. Steven has given me a very nice summary of the geology of the southern Cape – it really needs to be understood to make any sense of these retusoid/mirabiloids to recognise and dismiss the utter nonsense made of the classification of these plants.

31. 2019.6.4 – These were more scattered plants on the upper level of the terraces S Tradouw.

32. 2019.6.6 – This is a very retusoid set of mirabiloids and I hope the message is getting across that even in a small defined area it is difficult to form a clear picture of an element that stands apart from a great many others. A lot more to come. Jaap Viljoen sent me a very nice article on Lithops where the number of species is reduced. Curiously the author refers to his new set of accepted species as his “species concept”. What he means is that it is his concept of the species that constitute the genus Lithops. While obviously based on geographic distribution he says not a word about what his concept of a species actually is.

A new taxonomic approach for the genus Lithops N.E.Br – Harald Jainta

33. 2019.6.6 – Last population from south Tradouw and it is really worth considering each plant individually and asking just what it tells you about any relationship to mutica, mirabilis, retusa or any other “ii” or “iae”s – even to the rest of the S Tradouw set. The habitat like in one or two other instances, is not the decayed under layer to a cemented top. The southern Cape had an old sea or lake floor that deposited a geologically young sea-bed terrace. The upper layer was cemented by mineral accumulation ferricrete, calcrete, silcrete. Massive erosion has subsequently removed most of the terrace leaving many other exposed terraces of different ages as well as more recent ones. The old under layer never formed a really hard vitrified shale and has been leached of many of the minor elements to leave a very erodible clay = kaolinite. It is surprising how variable the old terrace actually was as there is a manganese predominance in the west while another clay = bentonite occurs eastwards, often as ocher. Clay is a critical component of soil and its complexity is mentally more challenging than I can manage.

Steven Molteno summarised a bit about the Southern Cape Geology … Ancient river systems are the main influence on the geology of the Buffeljags-Swellendam area. So the area’s geology is composed of multiple layers of alluvial gravels. All of which sit on top of a deep basin of older Bokkeveld shales and Wagendrift sandstone/shales.

So for the alluvial layers:
• The youngest gravel layers are obviously the lowest ones, and closest to the modern river. They’re almost always loose and uncemented.
• The older gravel layers are the higher terraces; The oldest become silcretes (soils fossilised in dry climate) or ferricretes (soils fossilised in wet climate). Others haven’t been cemented yet, so they’re just high-level colluvial terraces (uncemented cobbles like the marginata terraces at Drew).
• The oldest of all are not even gravels anymore. They’re the Enon conglomerate from the Cretaceous, and this survives in the area immediately around Swellendam and also in a patch just north of Buffeljags.

The character of these terraces is determined by the origin of the alluvial cobbles (quartzite clasts, sandstone, or maybe even shales), as well as the nature of the matrix cement (usually a reddish silt, but can vary). This means that each layer can have a unique soil and a unique flora. It’s also possible to correlate the remaining patches of a certain altitude, in order to reconstruct the original alluvial layer before most of it was washed away and replaced by younger, lower layers. The Bontebok Park is particularly dominated by these layers.

2019.6.8 – What am I doing? I started off just to share a bunch of pictures I was enjoying. I am reminded of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Why he shot the Albatross is an unanswered question as he stays bound to tell the story of how it was hung around his neck and later dropped off, for seemingly the rest of his life. Haworthia seems to be my albatross and it really dropped off when I wrote Update 8. Anyone seeing these pictures should read that document (haworthiaupdates.org Vol 8) that deals with flower character in Haworthia. It will explain why I will accept H. groenewaldii as a species other than as H. mutica, only if it grows wings and flies somewhere else. In vol 8 I explain why I consider mutica to be even conspecific with H. retusa. There are far more intractable problems in Haworthia than this. As for the albatross. The memory lives on! Curiously I can’t remember a single validation from anyone regarding those 12 or so Updates. So while laboriously telling my story it appears that no one has been listening! As Lawrence said “if they ain’t learnt, you ain’t taught”!

References:
Haworthia mutica (groenewaldii) and its twisted leaves.
What is typical Haworthia mutica?
Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 1
Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 2
Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 3
Haworthia groenewaldii I. Breuer spec. nov.

“If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.” ~ Henrietta C Mears

35. 2019.6.9 – A great big album of variants SW Tradouw. I have multiple flower pictures of most of these populations and I should really put them all together as for the Vol 8 of Updates. But journal editors and writers do not want to be persuaded. As Benjamin Franklin said “A man persuaded against his will, is of the same opinion still.” I reflect on how in 1970 going through all those very muddled pictures of G G Smith, that I was sure that his Buffeljags pictures held a major key to understanding the haworthias of the southern Cape.

2019.6.9 – Many years ago there was a debate about classification being science or art. It sure is confusing because you just have to look at the qualifications of people who have dabbled in Haworthia classification to see a problem. It has included bus-drivers, engineers, traffic policemen, accountants, artists, musicians, librarians, human resource managers, doctors, bookkeepers and more. Where botanists have been involved the end-product has not been much better. Now to our detriment science as DNA sequencing, has got a stranglehold on the subject that is not going to be shaken off.

Apurva Sukant: Dear Bruce, I imagined the DNA sequencing would be the holy grail in identification and classification. Why do you suggest that it will be to our detriment? Thanks for the post and clarification.

Bruce Bayer: It is to our detriment because it is so difficult for anyone to question the result. Also it is quite clear that for genera like Haworthia the degree of difference is just too small. Finally there seems to be a problem in that people doing the DNA studies are not field familiar with the plants and are not considering the results in respect of the observable.

A problem for me with DNA sequencing is that the result is presented as a phyllogram (cladogram, dendrogram, branching tree) just as the old diagrams of evolutionary steps. The only difference is that the stem is on the left and the end-points of the branches on the right. I see this as a representation of a process in time where time is represented by the left-to-right, and the branch end-points then represent the “species” in space? If this is so, it simply cannot work because space has a minimum of two dimensions. Only once have I had a botanist say it can’t work because species are reticulate – they do not proceed on a linear evolutionary path? Anyway, who really knows if evolution is fact, science fiction, or change with time of a spontaneous creation?

36. 2019.6.10 – S Zuurbraak, SW of Tradouw. The clay here is different and the plants have lost that dark colouration.

37. 2019.6.11 – Not very far from the previous population, and a significant discovery is that I do not know as much about the geology or the origins of these Haworthia as I might have thought. Essentially this place is about the highest and oldest remnant of the African terrace. The high backwater of the Buffeljags River. That is Steven’s job to explain someday? Beautiful plants!

I have to continually remind myself what I am doing. I am explaining that you cannot take bits here and bits there and sprinkle Latin binomials around like confetti to fool everyone into thinking you know something. All these populations and the plants, need to fit a single narrative. Using peoples names to generate a support base for yet another fable is not appropriate. I would remind readers of the story of H. serrata Bayer. There is no way that I feel mistaken in describing it as new except when I found it again where H. rossouwii of Von Pellnitz must have come from. Even Ingo Breuer took me remiss for making the connection. This amply demonstrates the illusion of a type and a description as forming some kind of unshakeable truth.

38. 2019.6.12 – More from SW Tradouw – is there any genus that has this extraordinary variation?

39. 2019.6.13 – Moving 3km southwards and dropping down 150m to the eroded flat wheat areas one comes to expect something different. This is one of many of the small mirabiloids, none the same. When I wrote the revision in 1996 very little was known about them and they existed in a few populations known as H. heidelbergensis. Very common indeed from east of Riversdale to Riviersonderend and morphing out of that in all directions to still other versions.

41. 2019.6.15 – There are many imponderables In Haworthia that cloud the issue. For one, there is the big separation of a group of species in area 2 of my map from the rest of the S Cape. This can be linked to the two populations about 12km west Swellendam. One is on an igneous intrusion and the only rational place for it in my personal view, is that it represents H. mirabilis. The wide range of variants so troublesome to description can be compared with mirablis “sublineata” at Bredasdorp, mirabilis E. of Greyton, but also to emelyae “multifolia” and even to H. rossouwii. Those are the first two pictures. The others must represent floribunda on the basis of the other variants of that species around Swellendam that also suggest it is not mirabilis. Together they stress the reality that a far wider concept of the species is necessary.

42. A very critical bit of information is missing in Haworthia classification. This is flower information, which has been traditionally scorned as not informative. Possibly the reason it tells what no one wants to hear. Here are flower profiles for these two imponderable mirabilis and floribunda populations from W Swellendam. What do you think?

 8058a flower faces

8059 flower faces

8058b flower profiles

8059 flower profiles

Lawrence Loucka: At a quick glance I can tell these are Haworthia flowers. On closer review it seems the two sets are slightly different, but I don’t have the vocabulary to describe them. The base of the flower tubes, the perigon, seem similar, and the petal center colors range from yellow/green to red/brown in both sets. 8058 top 3 petals seem less spread in face view than 8059. Bottom petals of 8059 seem more curved in profile view than 8058. But if I mixed all the images up I’m not sure I could sort them out.

Bruce Bayer: Yes Lawrence – that is the real rub. I also have sets of pictures of the changes of flowers with age as a complication. My pictures were taken to avoid that. But I also thought that if I halved each set it would also be near impossible to match the halves up again. In Updates I discuss the variables and explain that some of the differences are greater than that on which species are based, e.g. pedicellate vs stipitate, bracts stem-wrapping vs recaulescent, etc.

Bob Guffanti: All other plants are sorted based on floral details, with a little DNA evidence thrown in, and a nod to foliage.

Bruce Bayer: Yes Bob. It is very funny and ironic that the floral differences that distinguish the three “Haworthia genera”, was ignored and that DNA evidence was needed to recognise them. Similarly funny and ironic is that flower similarities are ignored because the foliage are slightly different.

ed. also see …

• Volume 3, Chapter 2:- Flowers of some Haworthia
• Volume 3, Chapter 13:- Haworthia IS confusing.
• Haworthia limifolia – a conundrum or a lesson?
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 1
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 2
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, part 3
• Very brief note re Haworthia nortieri flowers.
• A sequel…Still another view of Haworthia retusa and Haworthia mirabilis.
• Comprehension and significance
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 5
• Haworthia minima and pumila flowers
• MBB7989 Haworthia pumila, Lemoenpoort
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 6
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 7
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 8
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 9
• Haworthia flowers – some comments as a character source, Appendix 10
• A further report on Haworthia mirabilis in the Greyton area.

49. 2019.7.7 –  My argument is of course largely directed at “H. groenewaldii” because the binomial so sadly mirrors the pains of Haworthia classification. When I first wrestled with the issue of H. retusa var nigra in 1969 I did so because of a G. G. Smith’s photograph of a similar plant recorded from Buffeljagsrivier way back pre 1947. I “guessed” that this Buffeljags phenomenon was central to the Southern Cape retusoids and must have some relevance to Smith identifying the Kransriviermond hybrids as H. mutica. So its “(re-)discovery” and description more than 50 years later comes when when we should have learned something about taxonomic problems. Unless, one persists with a blind belief that there are countless species that owe their separate existence to origins from outer space (panspermia) and at any moment, “groenewaldii” (by resort to ordinary common sense) must relate to other haworthias in the Southern Cape. Just as H. floribunda surely does. But I have found it hugely frustrating and sheer tiresome, to have to deal with the kind of taxonomy that gets dished up to collectors by amateur taxonomists in amateur journals who have no greater insight into the mysteries of life than the most modest collector wholly unconcerned with the issues of relationships and origins. So I will turn to “groenewaldii” now and if any reader imputes its extraterrestrial origins, I think they must click elsewhere. :) It is said … ”Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned.” Does hell also have no obduracy like that of someone honoured in a plant name, defending it from sub summation? The taxonomist gains too much from the side benefits of using personal names as binomials and I have experienced this with “tauteae”, “meiringii”, “pringlei”, “vincentii”, “armstrongii”, “kingii”, “leightonii”, “blackbeardiana”, “battenii”, “cummingii”, “davidii”, “mortonii”, “jakubii”, “baylissii” to name but a few. So many (with sincere and warm regard for each persona so honoured) that almost the whole nomenclature of Haworthia seems to rest on the creation and preservation of mutual and self-esteem? There is of course a “bayeri” too! I would happily lump that if it produced a truthful classification and if I knew where it better belonged. This is what is described from Buffeljags – are they commonly like this?

The answer to that last question is of course … ”No they are not.” Where do those spots come from? Outer space naturally. :) DNA dropped from a passing comet, and a bit also straying to the floribunda a little further east? See pics. There is also a mutica to the south west with teeth like a floribunda – new species? H. tigrina?

Is there a good explanation for a sequencing product? I mean who said the only problem now is trying to explain a sequencing result? A phyllogram is a print-out of a sequencing exercise that presents a two dimensional tree of relationships. In the sequencing research where I have been involved in (unfortunately, as I said) the names were known to the researchers only by virtue of the written label attached to each sample. How a result can possibly be interpreted on that basis alone, staggers the imagination. On the other hand there are scientists who do at least have some idea of what the names are generally attached to, and for some weird reason assume the phyllogram is telling them more than what they were able to deduce from direct observation. That is wishful thinking. Is that somehow linked to the equally weird lack of a rational species definition applicable to the plant world? It did NOT need DNA sequencing to tell anybody that Haworthia was three quite different sets of things and that Haworthia sensu stricto was further from Aloe than either Haworthiopsis or Tulista. It is no joke that there is one school that proposes one large genus Aloe, and another that splits it into a myriad of genera. The same information is available to both groups. The truth may be that DNA sequencing is also telling us that our species concepts are simply too narrow and we do not like that.

2019.7.13 – Another re-cap. Species are supposed to be primary discrete life forms both in biology and in metaphysics. The definition should be the same. But it does not seem to bother botanists that they do not have a rigorous strong definition or more often, any definition at all. It does exist for zoology. Also for metaphysics but who knows what that is, or bothers to ask? There are some scientists that dispute the existence of “species” but they are probably also not taxonomists. But leaving that aside. If we are going to insist on Latin binomials, we really do need to be sure where the things we name, stop and start. You would think in the case of groenewaldii that the boundaries of mirabilis, emelyae, pygmaea, mutica and retusa (and even floribunda) were known to its author(s) and protagonists, and defined with some sense of certainty. Not so! So from Buffeljags I will jump to Area 1 of the given map and demonstrate the problem with H. mutica starting with just one locality in the south west (MBB7937). It is only problematic because the plants are associated there with white quartz in different stages of decay. This white quartz occurs in lenses up to 1m thick but also in thin strata. The erosion rate is slower than the shale that it is embedded in, and the plant associations are related to such differences. But this white quartz is not a requisite for the presence of H. mutica that also never shares habitat with H. mirabilis. I have about 40 pictures so see if you come out with also an unerring idea of what constitutes H. mutica as you now can with H. groenewaldii. This is so that you can be comfortable with names as binomials that makes sense, while there are also so many other populations that the narrative may extend to.

54. 2019.7.14 – It is quite easy to fool yourself into thinking it’s easy and that this lot is distinctive. But remember it is a quite new habitat and thus different growing circumstances. Many of these plants could be taken and deposited in populations across the Southern Cape without much chance of being recognised as misfits. Paradoxically, mutica is possibly one of the most homogeneous of the groups I still recognise as “species”, but the warning is that this may not be true. I have often commented on my early amazement to find a plant of H. mutica from Bredasdorp identical to one of H. pygmaea from Mossel Bay, in every respect apart from a slight colour difference in the bracts. Notices how the leaf tips of the first 8 leaves of the plant in the 6th picture, vary – pointed vs. rounded?

Lawrence Loucka : mutica means ‘without a point.’ If pointed, then can it be Mutica?

Bruce Bayer :) Of course – but this is a bit of the typological approach.that bedevils classification. You have been in the field and experienced how we grasp at straws to explain why we think we are looking at magnifica or maraisii or atrofusca or something from some other population while we are unable to come to grips with the totality of the single population we are in. The raw and inexperienced jump straight to “new species”! Looking for differences rather than similarities?

55. 2019.7.15 – I am curious to know what people are thinking … “Hey these are nothing like Buffeljags?” If so you join the club of a majority thoroughly fooled? If anything confirms the fact that geology and substrate chemistry are major role players, this is probably it. Where Buffeljags is essentially alluvium and a depositional surface, this white quartz is the rawest remnant of an erosional surface. What you will still see is that what is as a rule a non-proliferating plant, also coming out as highly off-setting (pupping). Could be this is related to the propensity of cliff hangers to pup furiously, on an erosional surface?

I note for the first time that there may be pattern in the sequence of truly leaf-without a point, and and successive leaves being less so?

Also notice on the 6th photo that this plant has comptoniana-like reticulate venation.

56. 2019.7.16 – I do not think I can get away from the need to note this aberration. About 10 years ago there was a great meeting of Aloe experts (about 30 of them) to discuss Aloe taxonomy. A protocol was drawn up to spell out the requirements for description of new species. No mention whatsoever of just what a species might be. Just what were they so anxious to see described in some proper fashion? Not surprisingly, a few years later a description of Aloe Barbara-Jeppeae [1] was published. Aloe is not like Haworthia in that individual plants of a species are near identical and there is by contrast and general rule, very little in separating them on that score. So to have this new species described based on the flimsiest of criteria when the literature was already suggesting that Aloe vryheidensis and A.dolomitica were possibly the same except for the issue of geographical distance, was surprising to say the least. No tribute to a great artist and personality either. I am grateful these experts stayed out of Haworthia. Or did they really and this is this just a demonstration of the deeper problems of classification? What is this proliferation where H. mutica is by rule a loner?

[1] Tom A. Mccoy and John J. Lavranos “Aloe barbara-jeppeae TA McCoy & Lavranos; a long-overdue tribute,” Cactus and Succulent Journal 85(4), 154-159, (8 July 2013). https://doi.org/10.2985/0007-9367-85.4.154

57. 2019.7.17 – It is interesting in that almost the entire quartz lens is just lying fragmented on the soil surface, which is weathered shale. (Elsewhere in the greater area, these quart patches are/were treated with disdain and some farmers go to great lengths to cultivate through or over them). There are almost two habitat conditions viz large lumps of newly fragmented quartz, and smaller older fragments between and round about. The proliferating plants were in or among the largest fragments. A few hundred meters away there is a second population where the habitat seems to have formed from a decomposing weathered this quartz layer with much clay. The soil is perhaps saprolitic i.e. there has been chemical weathering absent from the first site. The plants are not much different but how would one measure and tabulate “difference”. I add two isolated plants photographed about 1.5km east in a most unexpected habitat.

58. 2019.07.15 – I did promise some surprises but I am abandoning any choices. There are really surprises in any one population. You all know the story of the baboon in the maize patch picking cobs? It is just like that with images. How many can you hold in your mind? How good are you at memorising, averaging, synthesising or whatever it takes, to make an accurate call on similarity or difference? Very few people are familiar with H. mutica at all, and yet make the call on “groenewaldii”. They probably do not even have a clear overview of what that really constitutes. These pictures now are from a population in the Stormsvlei area and from a habitat that is as different from the Buffeljags River site as it is from all the other mutica localities. It appears to be a saprolitic (chemically weathered) soil, earlier underlying a manganic (containing manganese) surface cementation. Nearby is a truly remarkable mirabiloid population on the cementation itself! The images can tell their own story and you can ask “where do those spot come from?” The same passing comet that dropped them on H. floribunda and groenewaldii further east? This is no new species and the weirdness of the close mirabiloid underscores my entire hypothesis. This is of a single interactive gene pool in the Southern Cape and Little Karoo birthing retusa, pygmaea, mutica, mirabilis and emelyae, with still several hundred populations to demonstrate this as a very probable hypothesis, if not fact.

59. 2019.7.19 – This is from Sandrift Drew (yr 2011), well into the Robertson Karoo and so the most NW muticoid/retusoid/mirabiloid. A strange place with 3 Tulista species present and two sets of their hybrids. H. mirabilis is also present. But put that mostly in past tense. I was raw to field Haworthia at the time and exploring the amazing relationship between H. herbacea and H. reticulata when they existed as more than 10 different species names. (I shudder to think what the amazing taxonomists and experts of today would have made of that lot without my intervention). I happened to stop at Sandrift and quickly walked a dense patch of renosterbos. Picked aside some foliage and saw a single plant of? H. mutica? It is sacrilege to collect any single plant and I did. It grew into White Widow and a story told elsewhere. The patch of renosterbos is now the site of a centre-point irrigation system. In about 1945 a Mr Meiring employed at a nursery (Hurling and Neil) at Bonnievale, collected and sold 200 plants of H. mutica from Sandrift to Triebner at Windhoek for 1 shilling each. 1 shilling became10 RSA cents and I wonder what the equivalent worth is today. But the plants did survive in the wild until 2017 when change of ownership (again) brought the inevitable new broom and all is now gone. This despite countless visits and contacts with the landowners. I would describe the habitat as some kind of gravel terrace. But geological connections is now Steven Molteno’s domain. Very complex. I have two albums from different times and will post them both by date.

The first picture is White Widow – it developed that milkiness 15 years in to cultivation!

60. 2019.7.20 – These next were taken at Drew one year later, and a great thought comes to mind. There is an exciting, great future for all us kooky taxonomists with no clear idea of “species”. Just imagine all the new species we can describe if we visit the same sites at intervals of, say, 10 to 20 years. The truth is if we were just presented with clones from supposed different sites, we could end up describing several species from each locality without bothering about possible changes with time. I wish I had more evidence from my own experience to substantiate the real truth of this. I have two dramatic examples and evidence for just one. “White Widow” (“mootica“) is also an indicator of what can happen with time?

61. 2019.7.19, MBB6536 – I recall Napky as being the origin of H. maraisii v simplicior* or something like that in the total chaos of the Von Poellnitz/Smith era. While we seem so anxious to return to that timeline, are there any more surprises? Many. Just look at these few. Some could be taken for “magnifica” if that was remotely a reality. So let us rather say “some other mirabilis population”. But this must be “mutica” because there is a mirabilis in the vicinity and this population of spring flowering does not match that of nearby winter flowering. And did we say “mutica” without a point. Look at that picture of an excessively mucronate (ending abruptly in a short sharp point) plant almost in the image of the present meaning of “retusa” with the point drawn back from the margins in the centre-line of the leaf. Or has that changed too? I see the modern dictionary has a rounded leaf tip with an indented notch? Latin names also get a bit confusing because I recall “retusa” originally being taken to mean “bent-back – like a thumb”. This at least agrees with the original Latin description and accompanying illustration. (MBB6536 – the mid-east of Area 1)

Let me just add that H. maraisii is as much a myth as H. magnifica and people should know my history of involvement with those two names. It was a hard pill to swallow when I found that in fact they were part and parcel of the same mirabiloid complex. That there are those that dispute this simple reality is beyond my comprehension. IF they are right then there are several thousand haworthia species in the S Cape and many from any one population.

*H. schuldtiana var. simplicior idem. V.Poelln. 49:26(1940), Cape, loc. unknown, Beukman in Long 690. Not preserved. = H. mirabilis var. maraisii. – ed.

62. 2019.7.21 – Going away to the WSW is Haarwegskloof* – one of those conservation areas by default, as it was too difficult to grind down to make a wheat field. Jannie Groenewald was manager there. In dealing with this issue of “groenewaldii” and my present hypothesis, there is no intention to do anything but respect and applaud his genuine interest and competence as a naturalist par excellence. The problem at Haarwegskloof is that H. retusa (turgioid), H. mutica and H. mirabilis (as possibly 3 different heidelbergensisoids) are present. I concede that it will be nearly impossible to convince any botanist that these are all the same one species. But I have so far presented only about one tenth of the raw evidence, if as much as that, of the fact that this is a very probable truth. At Haarwegskloof, we have H. variegata just a short way away, that strange form of it in the limestones a bit south, and no Tulista? Even H. rossouwii could pitch up nearby. I am not at all sure what the geology of the area is. It is within a series of inselbergs in Area 1 (our map) NW Bredasdorp. There is much shale and quartz in the area. The mutica there is pretty average for what would generally pass as this “species” and you can just look at the variants and see that even here there are divergences. Again I happen to have two sets of images from 2011 but just a month apart. I can’t explain why there is just one inflorescence prominent in the pictures as flowering time should have been October about when the pictures were taken.

(* ed. – Overberg Renosterveld)

63. 2019.7.22 – Time is short and I am anxious to move on. Still Haarwegskloof and same general place a month later. I so wish I could just drop the whole lot down in one shot like a reinforced block of concrete. One population after another setting into one solid argument. I have too often found in Haworthia that I start putting an argument together point after point. Agreement all the way until 4th or 5th when I find the communicant has forgotten what the first two were that were agreed upon. End of discussion and no end result bar more confusion and disagreement. With writing it has been much the same. As if readers do not read and look at the pictures instead with conviction they know from that what the message was. The area around Haarwegskloof is studded with heidelbergensoid mirabiloids and I shudder to think that I had forgotten about the complexity of the area east of the Potberg. I do not think our map even covers it. That alone is a killer.

64. 2019.7.22, MBB7934 – October. South of Haarwegskloof and looking towards the limestones of De Hoop. I wish I could will slip in a picture of the variegata-like thing there just to hint that there is another can of worms to open. Problem is that was before the days of digital cameras and my mountain of evidence is only a tip of an iceberg. But no problem for taxonomists. As they say – do not confuse me with the facts. New species, new species, new species. Our succulent journal editors have nothing to worry about as there will always be something to fill the pages and please subscribers? Growers will be wondering how they can get sticky fingers on these? Nature conservation will be wondering how they can stop the army of pilferers. I sympathise with them all as it is a wonderful and enchanting creation just as it is meant to be.That house was occupied and people lived there in 1970 when I first wandered around in that area – a sad truth was the disappearance of the small farmers.

2019.7.24 – My view on conservation is that we can respect the gems and try to conserve them, but the essence is conserving the system that produced them. Every population has something in it that may be special. Recognising my own limitations, here is a diagram of the Southern Cape depicting the species hypothesis as simply as I see it i.e. H. mirabilis and H. retusa as a common gene pool between the Gouritz and Breede Rivers. H. floribunda does unquestionably intrude. This really complicates the issue because H. floribunda has its own connections to H. variegata, H. chlorocantha and H. parksiana. The interpretation of sequencing simply has to take account of these realities of geographic association and continuity. In my association with DNA researchers they have simply failed to address the issue as I have explained it to them. It has been suggested that the technology used is not separating the elements that it should. Thus the assumption is that the existing classification used to draw samples is adequate and that it is only a fine tuning and refinement that is needed. Further that “next generation sequencing” will produce a better answer. The truth may simply be that the sequencing is based on a poorly generated hypothesis and that the concept of species is based on a very weak definition. Question mark. ;)

Don Kirkwood, (Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden – US Botaniese Tuin ): Putting aside his (ed. – Jannie Groenewald) personal connection, I do think that whether the species is valid or not, there is a case to be made for “groenewaldii” being as distinct from mutica as mirabilis or pygmaea, including distinct separate flowering time where it is near other mutica from what Jannie says and what I’ve also seen.

But I’m no taxonomist or Haworthia expert at all – I’ve worked in landscape conservation most of my career – so want to make the more general plea for the community to err on the side of delineating and red-listing at least subspecies level if the variation does represent a consistent and separate type, especially if there are breeding barriers from flowering time. I think the poaching is driven by more aesthetics than formal nomenclature, and land use and protected area decision making is underpinned by targets that must be at least subspecies level. I’m obviously not pushing for rubbish taxonomy, but if there is any doubt, it makes sense to err on the side of delineating at least to subspecies level.

Bruce Bayer: Thanks so much Don – if you have read all my posts I am sure you must see that this is exactly what I am on about and where I am heading. Every haworthia population contains something genuinely different. What is the difference between 600 species and 600 subspecies? I have specifically addressed the flowering time issue and explained how it relates to the whole system. Has Jannie explained that there is a similar plant on the other side of the river and in the Bontebok Park as well? Is that not groenewaldii? He is perfectly welcome to post his views in the context of all my posts. We have had many discussions. See my latest post about conservation and system. I was instrumental in the initiation of the red data listing and see a serious problem with conservation by “concern”. Please look at the earlier post re system here and I really welcome comment.

I do not want to be distracted by a problem even more vexatious than classification i.e. conservation. But I live in Fisherhaven and see how conservation is applied to virtually only designated reserves. Other open green space is at the mercy of Environmental Impact assessment and whether or not conservation principles make any difference to outcomes. There are many open green spaces in and around the village grossly impacted by alien vegetation. These green spaces in reality have no conservation status whatsoever despite being on the Bot estuary margin, and in the Kogelberg Biosphere. There is no floristic data to support any conservation issue largely because no Red Data species are apparently present. It amounts to the fact that this is an area of least concern based on non-existent data? It is a nodal point for 4-5 vegetation categories.

Lawrence Loucka: Setting aside not having a definition for ‘subspecies’ it is important how we classify and name things. H. groenewaldii certainly has become recognizable, and has entered the vernacular. What is wrong with recognizing this thing as H. mutica var. groenewaldii and accepting that it is highly variable and can be indistinct. Please explain.

Bruce Bayer: Again Lawrence, this is not my terrain as I am on about the species issue where there also is not a definition? If a conservation argument occurs someone can do this and argue for the fact that this mutica variant is distinctive. But no argument based on a single species or subspecies will do much unless the threat is better identified and supported by other stuff. Is it east bank or west bank? East bank – does it have anything else of conservation concern (this itself is problematic). West bank more important but Bontebok Park is already there – does it need expansion? But is conservation by designated reserves or by general environment? Then we also look at floribunda and say all those oddities in and around Swellendam need some sort of conservation status. What criteria are used to place a mutica variant over a floribunda variant. Can I point out that one of our A-rated scientists confided in me that “Conservation biology is in a mess.” Can we resolve it here? My observation just by recent local experience is that environmental conservation outside designated reserves is in a crisis of monumental proportions. Debating one species vs subspecies – does it have any significance? How do I persuade a botanist that so many of these Fisherhaven species need some sort of taxonomic recognition to make the place conservation worthy. There is a new Oxalis species here, Leucodendron has significant variants, Serruria, do we have adscendens or rubricaulis? What is this thing we cant identify to species level, a Lachnaea? Is this small form of Protea scolymocephala insignificant? How important is leucodendron linifolia? Just how accurate is the red data list???? Haworthia is significant because it has been so thoroughly researched beyond that for so many other genera – and by many taxonomists. Eriospermum for example has had one researcher in the last 40 years. Who actually knows a simple genus like Asparagus? Lobelia? Is even Erica actually understood or is it solely the taxonomic preserve of one man who has spent his entire life working on it. If he did finish, is the genus he started with, still the same today?

65. 2019.7.24, MBB7937 – Still further east is/was this remnant population (ADH2729) showing how remnant skeletal habitats crucial to the survival of these plants, are slowly degraded. On the conservation scale it is of least concern when it is these skeletal habitats and low rainfall that give us anything to conserve at all. Elsewhere in area 1 you can find sheer ecological deserts from skyline to skyline.

66. 2019.7.9, MBB6941 – Just a bit north now. Amazing co-incidence with the threat to and destruction of “groenewaldii” on east bank of the Buffeljags river. It was brought to my attention by a consultant while doing an Environmental Impact Assessment. A wonderful population of H. mutica on a shale ridge that I identified for him. He reported back that OK he would recommend they move the proposed borrow-pit (quarry for road materials) back a bit to save it. I am very hesitant to go back and check again to see if the recommendation was ever implemented. This is a fundamental problem (or at least one of the problems) of the conservation process even if mutica was a double red-listed species. My own experience is that it is extremely unlikely that any recommendation is ever truly honoured, implemented and monitored. Although, there is great hope for “groenewaldii” still on the Buffeljags River west bank.

68. 2019.7.28 – Coming back to some sort of sensibility after 3 days in the field. Rogan Roth sent me these two pictures of tubeburcled mirabilis from the Swellendam area.

An extraordinary phenomenon. Ask me about it. We can identify 5-6 generations of Aloe ferox. The oldest single mother at a conservative 70 years of age based on the age of plants established at Karoo garden in 1946. The youngest seedlings are current year? I have seen a similar sequence from beyond Uniondale to west of Oudtshoorn.

69. 2019.7.30 – Rogan Roth kindly showed me this population east of Swellendam. It did not strike me as being the same as I had seen in that general area before and I also thought some of the plants could easily be slipped into the Rotterdam “groenewaldii” populations. With less rounding of the lead tips of course. Then it hit me that it appears I have been arguing “groenewaldii” in the context of a supposed discrete “mutica”. This sort of reasoning does not work in Haworthia. “Groenewaldii” is neither mutica, nor retusa, nor mirabilis and neither is it a species, subspecies or even variety of any of them. It is a discrete entity in a vast complex of Haworthias that could all be classed as H. retusa where each population is a discrete and significant part of that true species system. An added problem is that it is not clear where retusa stops. So the Linnaean system based on Darwinian evolution may be quite wrong. Genera and species are just human constructs – they aren’t real things. DNA sequencing may be telling us fairly accurately what the states are, and we are just not presenting or interpreting the product correctly?

70. 2019.8.2, MBB7500 – This is a really interesting population. Mid-south of area 1 of my map and east of mutica MBB7941 by a few kilometers. It is a “hybrid” population mirabiisXmutica flowering March. It has the name H. hammeri and this itself raises a very interesting phenomenon. Who “discovered” it, who actually collected it and how did material get to a foreign national to describe as a new species? Why is of course something else. Nature Conservation permit regulations are painfully restrictive and heading to where it may become illegal to be in possession of a “species” like this limited to this one locality. Is this another case of the binomial system prostituted for collector interest? A question for the collector (and probably the author of the name too) … “Just what is H. hammeri?”

Some of these look to take on a floribunda like twist and slightly elongated leaf … It seems to be very probable that floribunda is completely integrated into the greater retusa group (species) and this is what I have pointed out in many posts. Floribunda appears in real form a short way east of this – again in a retusoid mirabilid habitat and alone.

These are more pictures from Die Kop. H. ha..ha..mmeri. Flowering time might be a mirabiloid dominant.

The inevitable that I was trying to avoid looms. Stephen Gould wrote his book “Rocks of Ages” providing his view of “non-overlapping magisteria” for science and religion. A very warped one as I wrote in Updates. Science claims dominion over knowledge and dismisses metaphysics as lunacy. Religions claim dominion over spirituality and condemns mysticism as satanic. Both views are plainly nonsensical. Some while ago I posted on metaphysics and indirectly on how the outer world is an illusion of space and time. Reduction and particularization of science leads us out and away from truth. The fact is it is a conscious creation. Knowledge and truth is the same thing and must exist everywhere at once? Species on the physical plane have no reality because all matter is a projection and an illusion. There is humongous literature on all this. I am not telling you this as something new and my discovery. Science, having captured the designation for a process of acquiring knowledge, is suppressive and deliberately dumbs us down to the unreality of physical creation and the truths about it. Matter is created from 5 subtle elements described by countless mystics as earth, water, fire, air and ether. They say, that associated with these are even more subtle elements of sound, taste, touch, and smell. These are energy states (string theory?) and they are represented diagrammatically in the physical form by the 5 platonic solids (they are not solids – they depict energy fields with differing vibratory states). This earth = cube, water = icosahedron, fire = tetrahedron, air = hexagon and ether = dodecahedron. Chaurasi is described as the wheel of 84. 8,400 000 life forms and each life form is a particular combination of the five elements. Plants have only the element of water, invertebrates have fire/air, fire/water, fire/earth, fish are fire/water, reptiles are fire and earth, birds are fire, air and water, mammals and marsupials are fire, air, earth and water. Man alone has all five. All this used to be common knowledge and in Plato’s time, knowledge of the dodecahedron was made secret and divulged to people on the penalty of death! I am no weirdo – I am just telling you how it is.

71. 2019.8.4, MBB7937 – This is a really wonderful locality for mutica that Jakub Jilemicky pointed me to. Some distance E Die Kop and could be the SE limit before mutica is subsumed again in mirabiloids. The quartz is very ferruginous?

That Jakub discovered it is simply indicative of the nature of exploration and “discovery” when there is so much ground to be covered. I will touch on this again.

The group picture of Kobus Venter with Daphne and I was taken here.

72. 2019.8.5, MBB7535 – A little north of the last and on a sparsely quartzy shale substrate. The red leaf colors are probably due to soil factors unknown and I have never grown many muticas. It was a species fairly unknown to me even if one of the first I saw when I was at Karoo Garden. In cultivation I very much doubt you could get such rich color – reds especially seem to be reaction to direct sun in all the retusoids especially. I posted that toothy one before and in the “groenewaldii” series a green many leaved plant similarly toothed. Just another issue of what species descriptions where like with G G Smith when single plants were used.

That DK graph makes a point but is also very weak. What we actually have is a two bar graph of confidence and knowledge against time. It is with such a graph that we make assumptions about each others confidence (arrogance) and ignorance (knowledge). The Dunning-Kruger Effect just suggests that there is a tendency in all of us to be more confident in relation to our actual knowledge than we should be. Do we see ourselves as either unassuming and knowledgeable and others as arrogant and ignorant? Is this while we struggle to balance all that against a guess at what it means to be a nice person? I would have to apologize for how I am seen, for the assumptions made as to how I see others, while perhaps others may need to apologize for how they see me and so on and so forth. All this futile wasted effort when we should be objectively trying to seek the truth. Something I do not know is just how all these mutica variants behave in cultivation. I do know I had a mutica and a pygmaea in cultivation that looked identical except for bract colour.

73. 2019.8.6, MBB7944 – It would be truly interesting and instructive to now go southwards and see what happens with variegata, floribunda, and mirabilis, but there are other very significant twists. So lets go to the western boundary of the mutica distributions. A little west and north from Bredasdorp are three populations of H. rossouwi where one would expect to find either mirabilis or mutica. Weird, and it does get weirder still. I wish my staunch opposition :) will consider exploring the significance of the similarity of rossouwii to emelyae multifolia or to some of the mirabiloids. Then a bit further north still are six populations (known to me) of H. mutica and two of mirabilis. But there are many off-road isolated small patches of uncultivated land that will house Haworthia. Just as a matter of vital interest are the two mirabiloids. They are about 200m (MBB7944a) apart but one (MBB7944b) is contiguous with mutica MBB7943). While the mirabiloids are best treated separately, this exercise is about the affinities with the retusoids and muticoids. So let’s just look at 7944a without getting further misled by names such as maraisii, magnifica and a dozen or more others that are the product of intellectual obduracy or laziness, or need for something simpler than a purely botanical solution.

With gentle humour. We can now carry on collecting bits of information like a baboon raiding a mielie (corn) field dropping cobs as fast as they are picked, or try to hold it all in memory and form a greater picture. Please don’t think I am demeaning anyone or animal by the baboon metaphor – I am just expressing how difficult I find it to remember and relate all the populations and their variants to each other while trying to form a reasonably complete picture.

I numbered 7944 as a and b because they are only about 200m apart. 7944b H. mirabilis is contiguous with 7943 H. mutica (to follow), separated in an identical habitat by a shallow eroded depression about 5m wide. What is significant? Do those plants show “hybridism” and floribunda characteristics? Additionally how do you deal with this in the mainstream science arena? Geology would be easy as it is just a straightforward identical Bokkeveld shale series. Vegetation? A detailed Braun Blanquet survey would no doubt reveal difference except that at a Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) Congress on Karoo habitats in ca 1984 (Prince Albert) it was agreed that BB was inadequate in arid sparsely vegetated systems on a variable skeletal substrate. If BB was adequate, just think of the time needed to describe and record enough Haworthia habitats to generate a result? By the time the 10th habitat was annotated, the first would be different. Where would you find replication anyway? I am sure you could describe leaf anatomy, shape, form and texture for x number of plants in mind-dazzling language. Would that be better than these pictures? Incidentally, this kind of contiguous occurrence is also evident at two localities east of Riversdale where there is “hybridism” of retusa and floribunda, and again of retusa and mirabilis. Totally different substrates that might be very difficult to identify at a map scale of 1:50 000.

74. 2019.8.7, MBB7943 – All that DK stuff is just a distraction from the actual issue that is of just exploring a classification hypothesis. It is really only my opinion based on my experience and my DK profile. There are some serious issues that I cannot resolve and my conviction is that they are not solvable in the climate of materialism. While there seem to be gross continuities like I have been harping on as well as that of the cooperoids, cymbiformoids and more, there are single population oddities that I cannot fit e.g. elizeae, calcarea, truteri, marxii and also more. There will be another revision sometime in the future by someone else that will bring nomenclature changes based on real problems of typification and IBN deviations. These will be implemented with a different opinion of the species hopefully based on better sequencing and its interpretation. Wildly hopeful is that it will somehow accord with my definition of “species”.

Note the two plants with flower spikes. It was March and mutica is a spring flowerer – mirabilis late summer. One plant has a healthy peduncle. I have discussed this before and explained that despite this 4-8 month time gap cross-breeding does occur. No one took up the point re aloes and the question of germination and successful reseeding as rare events.

Jakub has done some great exploration and this is an area too that he pointed me to, mid-Nov, same general area. One plant was a monster at 16cm diameter.

75. 2019.8.8, MBB7954 – Skipping 9 populations to get south of Stormsvlei and to the farm Volmoed. It is November. I’ve tried to limit the number of pictures; but there are so many interesting variants. I wish I could show them one by one. They need to be looked at one by one.

Jakub Jilemicky – I remember seeing here a few scabrid clones.

Jakub has made such a valuable contribution. His localities are not the same as mine. He exposes the weakness in all our efforts. Lack of knowledge. Drawing conclusions from inadequate data. Not thinking and not asking questions. If we all honestly decided to sincerely think through this “species” problem and strive to arrive at a common agreed objective, we might be able to reach a solution. We will not do this while classification and revisions are presented and owned by individuals in a climate that does not value truth. Nor while fundamental principles of science i.e. “universality”, “communality”, “no personal gain” and “organised scepticism” are ignored.

There are absolutely mirabiloid genes (if you can call them that) in this population. Just out of sight in one of those little depressions is a mirabilis population that links the maraisoid mirabilis to the badiod and possibly with the muticoid. All this is supporting the hypothesis that there is a single gene pool and one species only? Mirabilis is in this area with the 9 mutica populations I mention – in not a single case do they occur together???? The reason seems to me very “simple”. The difference genetically is so small that there is a subtle element that determines the domination of one over the other in any particular habitat niche?

It is also just a single plant pictured, and as with mutica and retusa, one has to carry images of many plants from many populations to arrive at a valid opinion. I said badioid when I really mean all the mirabiloids in that Napier area. We are led to think in a reductionist manner and this is what enlightened thinkers try to explain to us when they use the word “holistically”. I crudely use the metaphor of the baboon picking cobs because I know what it means to go into the field and see a population of variants and say to what it relates to. Readers tend to forget what has gone before. What is the hypothesis we are looking at? A single gene pool with each population and plant significantly a part of a whole. A principle of classification is that it covers all the parts and not just bits of it. Now we go exploring and anything different is seen as new, instead of asking the question of how does it fit with or help explain what we already know.

A recent treatment of Haworthiopsis is rather depressing as it follows the tired concept of a flat evolutionary tree growing out of a two-dimensional bed of primordial mud. It is only the late Koos Roux as the botanist he became from a history as a horticulturalist and naturalist, who has ever expressed to me the same view I have, i.e. the pyllogram that emerges from DNA analysis by Bayesian statistics and its interpretation, is a two dimensional one and cannot express the true reticulate nature of change (is evolution the same thing?) and relationships. Whether the sequencing is past technology or new generation sequencing, this issue remains the same. If Haworthia is to be treated in the same way as Haworthiopsis the result will be comparable to the point at which Smith retired, confounded by the new facts of nomenclatural obligations both real and perceived. A dart board will be used to identify varieties in the continued absence of a species definition that is true. The sad fact is that plant taxonomy is very largely a subjective process. In the Haworthia groups this works for Tulista and for Haworthiopsis (unless one starts imagining subgroups and what purpose do those actually serve?). In Haworthia stricto there is just going to be the usual interpersonal put-down and strife.

76. 2019.8.10, MBB7075 – NE Volmoed between Riviersonderend and Stormsvlei. H. otzenii was described from near here, from a population no longer in existence.

Perhaps one can ask if anything has been proved by these posts to date and since about May? The argument has not just been about Haworthia retusa and its allies, but about classification and science generally. Is it my function to resolve these problems or just to suffer under them?

We have looked at (a guess) about 80 populations. There are possibly 400 more to consider. So we have seen about a fifth or much less of what there is, and I am not counting pictures I do not have from pre-digital years. Is all this seen so far in memory?

Tinus Potgieter asks “If we all honestly decided to sincerely think through this “species” problem and strive to arrive at a common agreed objective, we might be able to reach a solution.” “How to get to this point?”

Perhaps by recognition of the problem? When the idea of the national species list first arose, I was asked by PRE “Whose revision should we use, yours or that of Col Scott?”

In present time all hope is attached to “next generation sequencing” while faith lies in existing sequencing results. I have suggested that sequencing is flawed because it ignores the space/time nature of species, and that a definition can and should be derived outside of belief in an apparent objective way of determining them.

While collectors and the societies that represent their interests blindly put their faith in science, it is unlikely to happen. As in Haworthiopsis, some half-baked solution will be dressed up in sophisticated nomenclature. The language of DNA sequencing, Bayesian statistics and phyllograms will be added to trump and ridicule practical field observation and common sense. True or not will not be a serious consideration.