S outh Africa has a long history of
being connected to Europe
through the Dutch East India
Company’s ‘half-way’ stop-over at
Cape Town. A few hundred years ago
it was fashionable for Europeans to
collect plants and animals from Africa
and beyond. The Cape with its unique
flora attracted many private collectors.
It is not, therefore, surprising that the
many new plant genera were named
after these early collectors and their
benefactors – and that many of the
type specimens are housed in herbaria
in Kew, Stockholm, Berlin and Paris.
The Cape and South Africa generally
also provided Europe and the colonies
with many new living plants that today
have been hybridized and are widely
cultivated: e.g. geraniums (really pelar-
goniums) as window boxed plants in
Switzerland, gladioli, and heaths; and
clivias in abundance in Sydney!
In this lecture, Professor Eugene Moll
will elaborate on how as the editor of
The Illustrated Dictionary of Southern
Africa Plant Names he was able to
honour some contemporary botanists
and photographers at a time in taxono-
my when the names of plants are be-
devilled by upheavals and controversy.
* As a partially self-funding entity, we are obliged to charge a small fee for extension lectures. These are fixed at Summer School rates.
www.summerschool.uct.ac.za
Monday 24 July 18.00–19.00
LT3 Kramer Building,
Middle Campus, UCT
R100 (full fee); R50(staff)* R30(students)
RSVP 021 650 2888 or [email protected].
From Acacia to Zygophyllum: the story
behind The Illustrated Dictionary of Southern African Plant Names
Professor Eugene Moll
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