This essay was published in Alsterworthia International Special Issue No. 4.

My fascination with Haworthia has presented me with many problems in the way the genera in the Alooideae have been discussed, appraised and modified in and subsequent to G.D.Rowley’s analysis (1967).  Parr (1971) coalesced Astroloba, Haworthia and Poellnitzia and I refuted this in 1972 when I also wrote a rebuttal of Rowley’s paper.  My remarks did not deter Mrs Obermeyer-Mauve (1973) following and accepting Parr, nor in adding Chortolirion to Haworthia.  Rowley (1976) quite pragmatically discussed the Aloid genera, but in 1980 suggested the incorporation of Poellnitzia in Aloe.  He implemented this proposal in 1981 and promoted it again in 1985.  Smith and van Wyk (1991) published a cladistic analysis of the Alooideae which I felt was unacceptable because of the fallacious character states and sets that were used there.  Despite that paper and at least four others (Smith 1991, 1994, 1995; Smith & van Wyk 1992) generally supporting the uni-specific status of Poellnitzia, Manning and Smith (2000) incorporated the genus in Astroloba.

This essay was published in Alsterworthia International in a special issue No.3, June 2003.

This is a two-part essay.  The first is to discuss a problem in the small Madagascan Aloe species, and the second to discuss Poellnitzia.  The latter is now be listed in the genera of Southern African plants as Astroloba rubriflora.  I think it is necessary to point out that while this may now be perceived to be ‘authoritative’, the taxonomic treatments are in fact not so.

In 1943 Dr J. Luckhoff, who was better known as a collector of stapeliads, wrote up some observational and collecting records of Mr M Otzen after whom Haworthia otzenii was named.  Most of these records have been followed up at one time or another and we know what most of the plants and populations were that he recorded.  However, there is one particular item that remains a mystery.  One of Otzen’s records reads like this:

”About six miles north of the six or seven houses forming Infanta there is a large salt-pan on your right … Four miles further south follow a narrow track on your right, which ends on a bluff on the foreland called Cape Infanta.  On the southern slope towards the sea a very small Haworthia, almost black, with longer, narrower leaves than H. retusa, very scarce, and very difficult to find”.

(Published in Haworthiad 18:3:102-106, 2004)

The systematics of Haworthia and the production of a practical and useable list of names that reflects a predictive classification for these plants, has kept me preoccupied for more than 40 years.  Initially I simply produced a list of names published in 1976 as “Haworthia Handbook”.  This was not a great work but there was a desperate need then for some kind of conspectus that established order where there was none.  I rewrote the Handbook published in 1982 as “The new Haworthia Handbook”.  This was followed by C.L.Scott’s  “The genus Haworthia, A taxonomic Revision” (1985), which effectively snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  In 1996 I was asked to produce a synopsis of Haworthia for two projects, and Steven Hammer and Kobus Venter persuaded me to formerly revise the genus.  It should be explained that the greatest obstacle to such a work was the very difficult question of the validity and priority of names as required by an international code for plant nomenclature that sets out to standardize and lay down norms for this process of typification.  The problem in Haworthia is that the illustrations and specimens on which the process is based, were and are, so confounded.  Either there were no specimens at all, or the basis of the names existed only as barely identifiable illustrations.  An additional difficulty is that specimens from different species so often resemble each other, that unless locality data was available, there was often no certainty to what the name actually applied to.  Thus most of the available types were ambiguous and subject to alternative interpretations.  This is a self-evident truth.  The overriding consideration was to give meaning to the names in terms of biology and to give an objective reality to the different kinds of Haworthias that are the basic units of biological diversity i.e. species.  This latter objective seems very mundane and straightforward and it is extraordinary to now recognize what a minefield of discussion, dispute and argumentation is appearing in the literature concerning the subject.

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Abstract:
Classification of plants is often controversial and it is common to suggest that further research and application of technology will resolve problems.  This paper overviews six publications in peer reviewed botanical journals with respect to the classification of Asphodelaceae: Alooideae and particularly Haworthia.   It demonstrates that there is a gulf between the results produced by researchers using sophisticated technology and the practical, ordinary observations of the layman.  This may be because researchers are not familiarizing themselves with grassroots information and observation, which is observation of the plants in the field, in cultivation, in the herbarium and in the literature.  Their results may thus be contrary to the experience of the layman who may in fact be better informed.

(assisted by R.D.Kent and S.A.Hammer)

Let me not detract one iota from an exceptional and remarkable compilation of descriptions.  There is no need for me to go through the book in detail because in respect of it being a compilation, it is outstanding.

What concerns me is what it portends and what it holds for the future of Haworthia.  The book follows a Vol.1, which was reviewed in my book “Thoughts on Haworthia” (Spiderwalk, 1999).  It is quite clear to me that Ingo Breuer is in a sense re-inventing the wheel.  There is very little information in the book new to me and most of the work was available to Smith in 1947 and certainly to me in 1976.  A prime problem I thus have with the work is that it is so firmly rooted in the past.  It is thus a threat to the present and holds no promise for the future.  The work does present problems, and portends disaster.

Some of the implicit interpretations in this work are possibly just as dubious as some of mine and often more so.  I see little purpose in generating change for so small a result.  I find the foreword by Prof.G.F.Smith disturbing.  It demonstrates some of the malaise I describe in other chapters.  Smith’s foreword ranks with a similar foreword to Breuer’s Vol 1. by Prof. Ihlenfeldt which I commented on in “Thoughts on Haworthia”.  I have said from extensive experience with many genera, that Haworthia does not offer any challenges which are not extant in other genera.  It is my indictment of taxonomic botany that taxonomists are not better acquainted with natural diversity and the complex reticulate relationships of species.

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Published in Haworthiad 13:119 (1999).  At last a reasonably rational review which is written with some insight and understanding.  It makes points which lead to communication and hence discussion.  The then Editor of Haworthiad in relaying his feelings and that of his readers has criticised me many times for what is said to be my intolerance of the views of others.  I want to set this record straight.  I am intolerant of anything which stultifies and paralyses the understanding of Haworthia and distorts communication about it.  I had written to Paul before I heard he was preparing this review, and then I was thrown into a bit of a quandary.  I do have enormous respect for people and it is not my wish to hurt anyone’s feelings.  Paul is no doubt at all an excellent botanist and a human being of a high order.  Unfortunately, I do not think his review is particularly good as it is couched in the paradigm of the orthodox and the conventional.  I hoped for more, as I sense the complacence and almost smug security of the professional herbarium botanist who’s highly descriptive revisions will be held in awe by, and never ever tested in the crucible of, popular interest.  There are many very positive things in the review, and in concentrating on the negative I really feel that progress is possible.

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I read a review of the book “Rock of Ages” authored by Stephen Jay Gould, by D. Bristow-Bovey (Sunday Independent, 27th May, 2001).  Because the review left me feeling paltry and empty as a scientist, and defrauded, ignored or forgotten as a seeker, I acquired the book to find out what Gould actually had to say.  Gould is a seminal figure in the popular literature of biology where I browse, and I look to him to interpret science and its progress.  But this book with a subtitle “Science and religion in the fullness of life” seems to fail the subject, and me, completely.

I would have thought that the appearance of books like Aldous Huxley’s – “The Doors of Perception” (describing the effects of drugs on awareness), Fritjof Capra’s “The Turning Point”, Bentov’s “Stalking the Wild Pendulum”, Gary Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul”,  Shirley Mc Clean’s “Dancing in the Light”, Lyall Watsons books, as well as so many, many others; would have at the least indicated that mankind was on the threshold of a new age.  There is a vast literature on the subject of new age philosophy and predictions of change.  Where can science be in all this?

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(This article appeared largely as follows in Haworthiad, and is reproduced here on account of Charles Craib’s comments included in the following Chapter 30).

I often wonder why I have written and still continue to write about Haworthia.  The plants have had a special fascination for me since childhood, but it is not that I really enjoy these plants more than I do many others.  The interest for me lay in the problem of identification and naming and I was continually asking where a particular plant seen illustrated or growing came from and what was it and why did the names seem to differ.  As an entomologist I came to question all these names and their meaning, and to wonder about the classification.  After all, it is the names that we use as individuals or as groups of people to grow, collect and communicate about the plants we interest us.  So classification and names are just as basic and fundamental to us as a group of hobbyists as they are to botanists pursuing academic and intellectual truths.  The history of Haworthia was clouded with conflict before I started writing and the pattern has continued despite what history should have taught us.  I have personally made my best effort to generate a stable and sensible set of names for a community that I would like to be part of.  This community I wanted to encompass was that of the ordinary collector, the more dedicated collector, the horticulturist, the commercial grower, herbarium and field botanists, and conservationists.

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Introduction:     This essay is inspired by the chapter, of “Taxonomy and the sociology of botanical knowledge” written by Charles Craib in his book “Grass Aloes in the South African veld” (Umdaus, 2005).  That particular chapter was written purportedly to explain why he prefers the taxonomic revision of Reynolds (1950) to that of Glen and Hardy (2000).  Craib states that Reynolds provides “… a better reflection of the infrageneric taxonomy of the group”, and also better suited to “elucidation of processes concerning the autecology of the SA grass aloes”.

Craib maintains that… “The classification used by Glen and Hardy takes its place in the knowledge production process as a more abstract model than that proposed by Reynolds”.  However, Craib states that abstraction is a trend “…in the development of SA botanical knowledge and that such trends can be expected in the history of this development”.   He maintains that the discipline of a “sociology of knowledge” is essential for understanding how classification systems work as they do, and also useful in accounting for the regular revision of plant genera and changes in plant names.  I would like to ask if this argument is true for Haworthia and can it in any way explain the remarkable plurality of names that exist there and being added to exponentially.

In my opinion, Craib’s views are extremely relevant.  Not necessarily because they clarify the problem so much as demonstrate that there is indeed a problem.  Many of Craib’s assertions need to be questioned if the acquisition of knowledge is really the motive for writing and reading. I am truly seeking closure on the whole issue of why I ever wrote about Haworthia and still do.

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Dr Canio Vosa in Caryologia 57:4, 395-399 (2004) hypothesizes two superspecies for the subgenus Haworthia.  He cites my published works including Haworthia Update Vol 1 (2002).  It is not clear if he has considered all the species that I recognize, or considered that if there are superspecies there may ipso facto be ‘inferiorspecies” too.  It is also not entirely clear that he as followed my argumentation.  He writes…” the morphological characters, as used for species definition of the taxa in question, do not give a clear indication of true discontinuity over their geographical range which in some case(s) is rather restricted”.   As early as 1972 I pointed out that there were fewer species rather than more, and most of my works have featured some kind of statement on the problem of identifying any discontinuities, other than geographic that suggest a realistic concept of species as systems.

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In trying to close my long history as a writer about Haworthia, I am anxious that my closing thoughts are more understandable than my opening ones were.  Update 4 calls for a “paradigm shift”- for me as much as anyone else.  My friend Kobus Venter has written…”I feel that a lot of important descriptive and analytic content gets lost by reducing the species to this level (of superspecies)”.  My intention is completely otherwise.  My view has altered in the sense that I recognize and admit that all these new names and descriptions of writers like Masa Hayashi or Ingo Breuer are extremely useful and informative and that we are losing content in arguing and disagreeing about them.  My contention now is that our problem lies in the fact that we are trying to explain and understand these complex systems things within the context of a restrictive nomenclatural system that is not designed for the purpose.  It is confounded by the problem that as a society we do not understand what species are.

Latin names definitely mean different things to different people and my contention is that the real essence of these names should, in addition to their many other usages, be in the relation of plants to their origins, relationships, behaviour and imagined future.  A classification can only have the authority that experience and knowledge permit, and be really evaluated and understood by persons with the same evidence before them.  In coming to closure I have been exploring some more and with my wife Daphne, made two finds which further convince me that we have to come to a classification by agreement.  However, the requirement is that species are seen to be highly complex systems with none of the rigidity and inflexibility that nomenclatural rules imply, nor any of the egocentric authoritarianism that a history, of which I have been a part, suggests.

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I was in the field yesterday (March 14^th -2007) and then in reflection thought I would relate it to why I write and to what I have written.  Someone had been at Sanddrift Drew to look for the Robustipedunculares that grow there, and reported that they could not find H. marginata. This was a bit disturbing to me because that marginata has very slender long leaves and in the vicinity it also hybridizes with H. minima and H. pumila. The particular locality is a fairly prominent flat-topped hill which seems to have been formed from river gravel.  Despite being so rocky and fairly steep-sided, the hill has been very severely impacted on by agriculture. The southern Cape soils are very skeletal and agriculture is fortunately concentrated on the lower flatter slopes and to the alluvial flatter areas and eroded shales which can be machined to lands. Rainfall is in winter and distribution is very variable across the landscape. Rainfall patterns have also apparently changed with time, at least as agriculture seems to have developed. There have also been economic and social changes which have altered the fabric of agriculture. There was a time when farming was a way of subsistence.  Tractors and fuel was cheap and there was an endless space to tame. The consequence is that huge areas of very marginal land was ploughed and contoured for cropping. This was the fate of most of the Sanddrift hill and H. marginata was thus reduced to a narrow band of Renosterveld vegetation above the very last contour reaching to near the top of the hill. The particular farm seems to have teetered on the verge of failure as both a subsistence farm and a commercial venture for the last forty years. Several very dry periods in that time have driven various owners to financial despair.  Presently, however, the farm seems to have fallen in to the hands of what may be a new form of commercial colonialism. It is owned by an english gentleman who has the resources to farm aggressively.  Water sees to have been obtained from an expanded and more flexible irrigation scheme and the farm has entered a new phase of development. This is of course happening throughout the country and the threats to the fragments of undisturbed vegetation and rocky outcrops which have given me so much joy are now hugely disturbing.

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Credulity stretched.

Haworthia mortonii I.Breuer was published in Alsterworthia International  7(1):22(2007).

In Alsterworthia 7(1):22  Breuer states “No records have been found to indicate that this plant has been discovered before and as it is dictinctive I have decided to name it as a new taxon”.  This population is recorded in the old collecting record of G.G.Smith and I searched on the calcretes further to the east as far back as 1969.  Unfortunately it never occurred to me then to even look at the remnant of rock in an area largely destroyed by road-building operations.  Presently this small ravaged quartzitic outcrop is bisected by a meaningless road which is fenced and I did find the plants there in 2004 – name the place SW Karsriver.  Why I looked is because of the mindless destruction of a small valley habitat on the Karsriver about 3km further northeast where a magnificent form of Aloe brevifolia once grew with a population of H. maraisii that has gone with it.  I was thus anxious to confirm a maraisii so close to Bredasdorp for reasons best explained elsewhere (Update 3 Chapter 1).  Morton Cumming  apparently found more than the three plants I saw there across the fence on the north side.  I recognized the plants as minima/marginata hybrids and was also a bit nonplussed by the absence of putative parents.  Minima was only known at Mierkraal far to the southwest and marginata is known about 10km further to the northeast.  I was disturbed by the fact that I could only find the three plants and in February 2005 I visited the site again and collected seed under MBB7453.  Cumming seems to have been at the site also early in 2005 and claims to have seen many plants, which surprised me.  In the past the site has been grossly disturbed and a constant pain to me is that major road-construction in the late 1960era led to the use of rock outcrops such as this, as gravel sources.  The badia-locality at Napier became a major gravel source and could be seen as a huge white scar on the landscape from afar afield as Swellendam.  Thus this site at Bredasdorp suffered the same treatment and the land surface has been transformed with the removal of surface rock and gravel.  Only the smallest fraction is left and I do hesitate to report the survival of “maraisii” on virtually a single quartz rock remaining on the south side of the road pictured in Alsterworthia.  I cannot believe that I would have missed any plants in the area available to be searched.  Farming in the area is not mainly devoted to “merino-sheep and grain crops”.  Farming in the area has become highly commercialized and water is exported from afar afield as the Theewaterskloof Dam at Villiersdorp.   Grain crops are unreliable and with this artificial supply of water, farmers have turned to ostriches and dairy cattle.  The result of  feed-supplementation has resulted in higher stocking densities and greater trampling and damage to natural vegetation.  This has put tremendous pressure on pockets of surviving vegetation that is also exacerbated by a turn to dual purpose Dohne-Merino sheep breeds that graze more aggressively than the original Merino.  Additional to this is the destruction of roadside vegetation in what appears to be a deliberate policy of road-engineering to clear verges to the farm fences, and the dreadful application of herbicides for the fear of weed-seeds contaminating crops from those road verges.  The possibility that this herbicide application and disturbance of stable natural roadside vegetation will certainly lead to greater weed problems in the future, is left for that dark future.

During the time I have worked with plants, I have met many botanists and taxonomists and I particularly had the opportunity to associate closely with one of the most prominent in succulent plant taxonomy.  I could never hope to emulate the energy, application, thoroughness and zeal with which that person approached the subject, nor the academic and written achievements.  The sharing of ideas was however, a problem and I never felt much more than student.  My discomfort with the taxonomic product of this persons work eventually resulted in alienation and eventually I wrote in frustration…”Taxonomy as a science has to answer the question “Are species real?” starting and ending with proper definition of the word/concept.”

Recently I have been in communication with three recognized botanists and have their written admissions that…1. “Taxonomy is in a mess.”  2. That the question of species is “highly controversial”.  3. “The current framework for decisions (for taxonomic decision making) is riddled with flaws, but it is the only one we have. Someone who knows the plants has to make decisions.”

I do presume to have some knowledge of the plants and hence I made a decision to submit a list of names which I think could serve the need of a botanical reality.  However, the very botanist who had suggested who should make the decisions then commented …”It is interesting that all of the ‘new’ discoveries (e.g. H. cummingii to name one) must be forced into the existing classification”.  I asked if there was any evidence that force was required to do this. There was no reply.

My conclusion has to be that the botanical nomenclatural and classification system is flawed and that there is actually no way in which Haworthia can be satisfactorily forced into that system.  Therefore there is no further contribution that I can make.  There is still a huge amount of fieldwork that could and should still be done, but I cannot see that any new records or observations can significantly improve any classification that is connected to the traditional systems and escape the controversy invariably generated when more than one taxonomist becomes involved.

It is now evident in all this that human sensitivities are of far greater consequence than sensibilities.  While a classification may be an apparently intellectual and truth-finding process, it may be nothing more than an easily accessible arena where minds can create an illusion of being so occupied.  I am deeply sorry that I have thus offended and hurt people by my own activities there.