From the Archives: Newsletter January 2008

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Newsletter January 2008

Dear Plant Lovers

Yet another year has scurried by.  Is this rush of time because we are all so busy, or is it a symptom of every increasing age?

In the last newsletter we contemplated whether we could expect a good display of Amaryllids in the autumn of 2007 – well, the answer is no, and we are none the wiser as  to what makes them flower en masse or even what makes them flower at all!  With minor exceptions, most SW Cape Amaryllids did not flower well, with possibly the most disappointing being the Haemanthus species.  Some, for example, Haemanthus namaquensis, have not flowered for almost 5 years, and we look forward to seeing what they do in autumn 2008.  This year everything seemed right for flowering, including good rains early in autumn, but obviously there was something stopping them that we don’t know about.

This last winter in the SW Cape was perfect for flowers and those of you who visited the Cape in spring 2007 will have seen one of the best floral displays for many years.  We had good heavy falls of rain accompanied by snow in the high mountains at regular intervals from April until the end of October.  By contrast the Karoo and the central parts of the country are experiencing a severe drought.  The rains have continued well into late spring and this has favoured good seed set resulting in some fine seed collecting trips.  It has also favoured the late flowering species of bulbous plants which often fail to flower or to set seed, due to premature dormancy.  The down side of this is that all the seed has to be cleaned, sorted and packed.  Rod spends his days from morn till night banging, shaking and sieving see, and still the crates of drying seeds awaiting cleaning remain undiminished!

Each time we visited Namaqualand this spring we were chased out by rain and icy cold weather.  Our last trip 2 weeks ago is a good example.  On the first day the temperature was in the high 30s (celsius) and we were into every farm dam and reservoir desperately trying to stay cool.  We then drove north, expecting even hotter conditions, but that wasn’t to be!  We went to bed in our thin summer sleeping bags, normal for this time of year, and woke during the night freezing cold with the weather looking black and ominous.  We hadn’t taken thicker sleeping bags with us (this is summer!) so we had to put all our clothes back on and huddle in the tent miserably! The next day we collected seeds in all our clothes plus raincoats, and we were still not warm!

In September/October our Aloe seed collecting trip to Venda in the very north of South Africa was also washed out and the whole time we were there it rained gently and softly, most unusual for that part of the world.  A few years ago we spent some time chatting to one of the local inhabitants, and he told us “It is difficult for Venda to get rain” which was an accurate statement!  Normally it is fiercely hot with the odd short thunder storm, and prolonged drizzle is not common.  We were astounded at how quickly the vegetation responds to the first rain of the summer.  We slept under a baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) one night, and when we went to bed the branches were bare.  It rained hard during the night and next morning the first leaves were unfurling and some flowers were making an appearance.  In this part of the world, if you snooze, you lose!

Coupled with this trip to collect Aloes, we flew to Ireland & the UK for a short speaking tour.  We toured some gardens, gave some talks, and managed to do some lovely walking.  Everyone had warned us about the bad weather in Ireland, but we probably had more rain on our return to South Africa than we had in Ireland!  South Africa is perceived as a dry country by most people, and yes, parts of it are very dry.  But large areas actually get more rain than most of Europe, with Cape Town getting about 1250mm (50 inches) and Johannesburg 500mm (20 inches).  The difference is that in Europe the rain tends to be softer and to fall more frequently, giving the impression of a wetter climate, whereas in South Africa our rain generally falls in short bursts, separated by periods of sun and heat.

Our staff situation remains unchanged, but we do have a new addition to the cats.  For many months earlier this year we fed a stray black cat that had taken up abode in our garden.  He was a fully fledged tom and was becoming troublesome, so we managed to trap him and have him neutered, but he still remained wild and we fed him outside under one of the cars.  On our return from a particularly long field trip, we opened the back door, and in he rushed, rubbed round our legs and told us how pleased he was to see us!  We assumed that while we were away, one of our staff had managed to tame him, but they told us that they had hardly ever seen him, apart from at mealtimes under the car.  He slept on our bed that night, and has remained with us ever since.  Darkie christened him Squatter, and the name has stuck!  Our other cats have become quite old and bony, as old cats do.  When we started Silverhill Seeds, two of them were young spry creatures, and now they are 18 and 16.  We have been running the business for about 15 years and we hope that you have enjoyed the variety of seeds.  Where have all the years gone to?

Best wishes

Rod & Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2007

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January 2007

Dear Customer

All our newsletters seem to start with the weather, and this one is no exception!  As gardeners, the weather is of great importance to us all as it determines what we can and cannot grow, and rain, either too much or not enough, is foremost in our minds.  At the end of the last wet season in the SW Cape, we heard from a number of people how wet it had been.  However, after talking to farmers throughout the winter rainfall area, it appears that for most places the rainfall was actually about average –  I think that we have had so many dry years that we have forgotten what “average” rain is like!  The distribution throughout the season was good, resulting in excellent flower displays, and our only criticism is that the rain stopped early – in early September instead of in October.  Some areas, however, did receive far more than their average rain – the southern Cape and further east along the coast had major floods, and Namaqualand and the Karoo had about 3 to 5 times their normal quota.

We are now well into our hot dry season, although we have had some unexpected showers of rain.  Looking out of the window a few minutes ago, we saw a helicopter flying past with it’s fire bucket hanging underneath, so it seems as though the fires have now begun.

At the end of August the Indigenous Bulb Society held a Symposium in Worcester, about 100km from Cape Town, and almost 100 delegates from all over the world attended.  The bulb displays on our field trips were spectacular (a far cry from the last Symposium 2 years ago!) and everyone took far more photos than expected!  Thank goodness for digital cameras!  We visited Middelpos (in the Karoo) immediately after the Symposium with 38 delegates, at the height of the bulb flowering time.  This sadly taxed the resources of the Middelpos Hotel which only has accommodation for 18 people!  They solved the problem by packing some of the town inhabitants off to Sutherland for 3 days, thereby vacating their houses for us, and other delegates stayed in the Clinic and school hostel!  Middelpos normally receives about 125mm (5 inches) of rain each year, but this winter they received 375mm (15 inches), resulting in the best flower displays in living memory. The displays of Romuleas were particularly impressive, and we saw fields of the most spectacular Romulea unifola, a species that we normally struggle to find at all.  We also saw all the old favourites:  Tritonias, Bulbinellas, Daubenyas, Ixias, Geissorhizas, Babianas, Lachenalias, and of course sheets of annuals such as Felicias, Dimorphothecas, Senecios and Zaluzianskyas.  We went back to the area a month later, and found fields of the rare Gladiolus marlothii, Ixia thomasiae and various other October flowering species, including some unusual species.

We are now waiting with interest to see what effect this rain will have had on the autumn flowering Amaryllids.  In March 2006 they did not really flower at all throughout the winter rainfall area, despite good early rains in March and April.  The more we see of these plants, the more we realise how little we know of their life cycles and what makes them flower.

Our collecting year in 2006 was as busy and as rushed as usual with trips to the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, Venda and the Drakensberg, plus Namibia and Botswana.  When we tell people that we are off on a field trip, they always look at us knowingly and they seem to think that we are off on holiday, or a jaunt to enjoy ourselves!  Well, yes we do enjoy ourselves, but field trips involve lots of hard work.  We work from sunrise to sunset, in all weathers from freezing to over 40°C, in rain and sun.  Our evenings are usually spent cleaning seed, treating it with insecticide, ensuring that all the collecting details and plant names are correctly recorded, and packing it all away in the car.  Often slightly green seed may have to be ripened in water, and these jars are inspected every day for ripe capsules.  And of course if the seed was collected wet, it all needs to be dried out before being packed.  Our last couple of trips have been fiercely hot with temperatures in the low 40°Cs.  On these trips we spend as much time looking for farm water reservoirs as we do for seeds!  We stop the car, leap over the fence and strip off our clothes in a trice, and a few seconds later we are in the water!  What a relief.  Seed collecting under these conditions requires caution – everything is so dry and brittle that if you accidentally touch the seed spike or capsule, the seed flies off in all directions.  The opposite applies when it is wet.  Then the plants are reluctant to let go of their seed, the capsules rehydrate and it becomes impossible to tell whether they contain seed or not.  If the seed is very fine and dust-like, one cannot collect it at all as it just sticks to everything.

Despite the sometimes indifferent weather and the days of fairly boring driving, yes we do enjoy the field trips.  Particularly on those occasions when the weather is perfect and one comes round a corner and there is a plant you have dreamed off, just dripping with ripe seed!

We DID go on holiday this year – we spent 3 weeks walking on the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, and we didn’t collect one seed!  We spent most of our time on La Palma where the walking is either very up or very down, but wonderful.  The islands are volcanic so the scenery and the plants are fascinating.  We also spent a few days on Lanzarote and on Tenerife where we climbed El Teide at 3720m.  The volcanic cone was snow covered on the day we climbed it, and this contrasts greatly with the smoke and sulphur fumes that pour out.  It took us about 6 hours to walk up, and 4 minutes to get down in the cable car!

Frontier’s new plant house at Brackenfell is now fully operational and is at present full of flowering Streptocarpus and Zantedeschia hybrids in all colours.  Rod and Andy spent a couple of Saturday mornings at the local craft market selling potted Zantedeschias in full flower, as Christmas presents.

Happy Planting

Rod &Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter July 2006

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July 2006

Dear Customer

Thank heavens for small mercies – at present it is pouring with rain and it is cold and wet.  Although we have had regular rain this winter, up until yesterday we have only had about ¼ of our annual rainfall, with almost half of the winter behind us.  Hopefully this current fall will improve the figures.  Our dams in the SW Cape are all about half full, so we are not as desperate as we were last year.

In the last newsletter we were about to leave for Uganda and the Ruwenzori Mountains, albeit with some trepidation as the Ruwenzoris have a reputation of being very rugged and hard mountains.  After flying from Johannesburg to Entebbe via Rwanda, we hired a car, met up with our two botanical companions, and drove to Kasese at the foot of the mountains.  The next morning, after a short drive, we presented ourselves at the Ruwenzori Mountain Services office at Ibanda, and were supplied with 3 guides and 15 porters.  That afternoon, after repacking our rucksacks to the porter’s requirements, we set off on our 9 day circuit of the mountains.  We saw a complete range of vegetation from equatorial jungle at the lower levels to Dendrosenecio forests and giant Lobelias in the afro-alpine zone.  The first 2 days were reasonably warm although partly cloudy, but once we were above 3000 m above sea level, we had snow or rain or both every day.  We kept having to remind ourselves that this was supposed to be the “dry” season – what the wet season must be like we cannot imagine!  The walking and the scenery were both magnificent, and as we only walked between 7 and 10km each day, we had plenty of time to botanise.  Our highest night was at an altitude of 4500m, and the vegetation at that level consisted of only mosses.  Our guides were extremely knowledgeable on birds, animals and plants, and at the end of the trip we all agreed that it was probably the most enjoyable walk that we had ever done.  Whilst in Uganda we also took the opportunity to go chimpanzee tracking in Kibale Forest where we were treated to some really close encounters with several groups of animals habituated to man.  We camped in the Forest for 3 nights, and had an interesting time trying to identify trees that were tens of meters high.  Driving in Uganda is not for the faint hearted, and at the end of 3 weeks we were very relieved to get ourselves and our car back to Kampala in one piece!  Our last day was spent in the Entebbe Botanic Garden on the shores of Lake Victoria, with hundreds of Fish Eagles calling overhead.  A wonderful way to end a superb trip.

The interior of South Africa had a particularly wet summer and good to excellent rains fell over most of the country, including the dry western and southern parts of Namibia.  We visited Namibia to see it lush and green instead of its usual arid self.  It was amazing to see meter high grass in areas that are normally totally devoid of vegetation.  You will see from the catalogue that we collected many Sesamum species and three species of Rogeria – we also obtained photographs of them which we will put onto the website so you will be able to see how attractive they are.  Despite the good rain it has been a disappointing seed year with nearly all the woody plants putting their energies into growth and reserves rather than into reproduction.  Our route home from Namibia took us through eastern Botswana, an area of savannah woodland which is largely uninhabited.  We drove along some deserted rather remote side roads, but eventually had to give up and return to the main road because of all the elephants!  It appears as though all the elephants from Zimbabwe have relocated into Botswana, and we encountered every one of them – we saw hundreds!  The final straw was when we landed up with all four of our car tyres stuck in elephant footprints in the mud, and we had to engage 4 wheel drive to get out only to fall into the next ones!  That night we camped under a large tree in the area, and a couple of elephants dropped in for dinner and were feeding on Mopane trees a few meters away from our tent.  At the time we were a bit nervous, but thinking back, we really are privileged!

On our way to and from Namibia, we visited all of our usual Amaryllid localitites, but were very disappointed as there were hardly any flowers at all.  Some species such as Hessea breviflora and Strumaria truncata and salteri flowered well, but there were no mass displays of Brunsvigias or Haemanthus of any sort.  The more we see of these plants, the more we realise how little we know about them – what makes them flower, for example?  It is obviously far more than a case of wet or dry.

Andy, our partner at Frontier Laboratories, has expanded once again and has added another 4000m2 of greenhouse to the lab.  We intend using it for growing on some of the bulbs that we produce, eg Zantedeschias, Scadoxus, Veltheimias, Ornithogalums, Agapanthus etc.  The lab is very busy and we are vaguely thinking of expanding it.  The property is looking very nice this season, with most of the “alien” vegetation (Australian Acacia species) now removed.  Each year more and more annuals and bulbs flower in the undeveloped portion of the property, and we realise how many species managed to survive the 30 or more years under invasive tree species.

Rod has found that seed cleaning has an element of risk attached to it.  He has developed a most impressive and persistent allergy to Podocarpus falcatus seeds!  His face swelled to the point where he could barely open his eyes, and he was covered in a scarlet blotchy rash all over his body.  A trip to the doctor and 4 injections later he seems to be on the mend, but at present is extremely irritable, itchy and best left alone!  He has cleaned these seeds for about 12 years with no problems at all, so what happened this year we don’t  know.  His message is – treat Podocarpus with respect!

At present we are preparing for the IBSA (Indigenous Bulb Society of SA) Symposium, to be held at the end of August. Rod is the Chairman of the Society and Rachel is the treasurer, so we both have lots of work to do.  The bulb displays for the field trips should be excellent this year due to the rain, so hopefully all our delegates will have an interesting time. Maybe we will see some of you at the Symposium.

TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS FROM THE USA

As many of you know, we are having increasing problems with the USDA, and they are taking up to 3 weeks to inspect our parcels.  The US Government has brought out a new system for people importing small quantities of seeds.  You need to apply for a permit for “Small Lots of Seed”, and you can then import seeds with no phytosanitary certificate. Not only will this make your seed orders cheaper, but it should make the whole system much quicker.   To get a permit, a resident of the USA sends in a permit application form.  Information is at:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/Q37/smalllotsseed.html .  Alternatively, go to:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/permits/plantproducts/nursery.html and click on the Small Lots of Seeds Program. From there, you can click on “PPQ Form 587” (a form that is used for many kinds of plant permits) to download, print, and fill it out. Page 2 of the form has special instructions for the small lots of seed permit. There are only two lines that require special wording; the rest is your personal information.  Then the completed and signed application needs to be faxed or mailed to
the number or address at the end of the instructions (page 3).

Best wishes to you all

Rod and Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter July 2005

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May 2005

Dear Plant Lovers

We have succumbed to pressure and have printed a catalogue again!  Yes, we said that we were not going to print one this year, but it seems that there are arguments both for and against a printed catalogue.  Not printing one saved us money, but we have noticed that our customer base has changed.  Many of our old customers who ordered regularly previously have not ordered this year, and we feel it may be due to the necessity for Internet access.  We had many moans and complaints, and we have realised that on the whole, gardeners do not like computers, and they like to read proper catalogues printed on paper!  So we have had one printed in a hurry, unfortunately without a colour cover this year, and hopefully it will make everyone happier again.  This catalogue will be something of a litmus test and will determine our future policy.   One option may be to print a catalogue each year, but to charge a small fee for it to lessen the cost of printing.  Your comments would be helpful – do you want a catalogue each year, and would you be prepared to pay for it?

Due to the rapid turnover of seeds, we suggest that you decide which seeds you want, and then before placing the order, please check the website to see which new species have been added to stock, and which species are sold out. This will mean that you are less likely to order out of stock seeds.  Our website has been revamped and it is extremely fast and even simpler to use than before.

Working from home is a real pleasure and as we have mentioned before in a previous newsletter, we should never have moved in the first place!  We have modified our house slightly, we installed 2 telephone numbers (one business and one private) and we make sure that the business does not invade our privacy to the same extent anymore.  We try to limit our working hours as it is very easy to just keep on working late into the night.

Those of you who have phoned this year may have spoken to Denise, our new staff member.  She is an old friend from the Mountain Club and has taken over from Frances.

Darkie, Ondine, Cherrie and Rachel’s mother are all still with us, and we hope that they prefer our garden to the bullet proof vest factory!

Rod celebrated (or mourned) his 60th birthday earlier this year with several botanical friends.  Luckily he still feels as fit as ever, but creaks more as he plods up the hills!  He has taken the plunge and is in the process of acquiring a digital camera.  Those of you who visit our website will have noticed that we have added many photos to the site.  This is an ongoing process, and will continue until we reach the end of the slide collection.

Now to comment on the weather, a matter of great interest to all gardeners.  The rainy season in the SW Cape started with a “bang” this year.  We had a “black south-easter” together with a cold front which dumped 125mm (5 inches) of rain on Cape Town overnight.  The towns further east (Hermanus and Bredasdorp areas), received a devastating 450mm (18 inches) over 2 days, together with lightning and thunder.  Normally the south east wind brings fair cool weather to the SW Cape – a black south-easter is rare and brings heavy rain and violent storms.  This was over a month ago and several areas are still 1m under water!  The damage caused was immense – erosion of farms, huge washaways in the roads, many people homeless and many towns cut off for several weeks.  Ironically our dams are still only 29% full – of course the rain did not fall in the catchment areas!  Since this initial rain, we have had fairly regular falls in Cape Town, and as we write this, it is blowing from the north west and threatening to rain. Hopefully it will come in the night.  To conserve water we have installed a 5000 liter rainwater tank which catches water off about 50% of our roof, to supplement the grey water from the house. Wash day is now “bucket day” as we cart water from the washing machine to as many plants as possible.  We have our name on a waiting list to sink a borehole and that may help our water problems in the garden.  Namaqualand has also had early rain this season, so it looks as though there may be flowers this year.  This obviously depends on the rain for the rest of the season.

The Vanrhynsdorp area produced a spectacular flush flowering of Brunsvigia bosmaniae this autumn.  There were literally thousands of bulbs all flowering at once in April, yet 60km away in Nieuwoudtville, hardly any of the large Amaryllids flowered at all. Such is the fickleness of flower displays.  However it was a superb year for Strumaria watermeyeri which we found north and south of Nieuwoudtville, plus Crinum variabile was magnificent in the river beds.  Two weeks later all the Amaryllids had gone, and Nieuwoudtville was a blaze of colour  – this time it was Oxalis in yellows, pinks and whites, plus white Polyxena maughanii by the millions.  In a week we are heading for the Richtersveld which has also had rain, and it will be interesting to see what we find there.  The Nieuwoudtville area is famed for its spring flowers, but the display in autumn can be just as spectacular, depending on the rain.

Best wishes to you all for a happy and successful gardening year,

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2005

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January 2005

Dear Customers,

Perhaps the biggest change in our lives at present is the moving of our business (yet again!), this time back to our home.  With the wisdom of hindsight, we should never have moved anywhere, and just stayed here!  It would have saved us a large amount of mental energy, physical labour and money!  The industrial premises at Diep River were very suitable space-wise, and with 200m2 at our disposal we expanded accordingly.  We are now struggling to fit back into 100m2 and we have had to get rid of a fair amount of office furniture.  Unfortunately our neighbour at Diep River manufactured bullet proof vests, and like most activities connected with the arms industry, this was highly anti-social.  Large machines knitting stainless steel wire make a lot of noise, so much so that on some occasions we couldn’t hear ourselves speak with our windows open.  To top this racket, they played the local pop radio station at full blast to drown out the noise of the machinery!  In addition to this, although the premises were only 8km from our home, it sometimes took almost an hour to get to work, time we could ill afford.  So, we are back home!  Our cats are delighted to have us at home again, and they spend much of their time in the seed room, on top of whatever we are trying to do.  We have built a tiny “swimming pool” (about 1m x 2m) in our back garden, and the sound of bubbling water while we work is far better than any noise the bullet proof vest people produced.

Our postal address remains PO Box 53108, Kenilworth, 7745 South Africa, and once again we have our old telephone (+27 21 762 4245) and fax numbers (+27 21 797 6609).

During December 2004 and January 2005 we decided to take a break and try to regain our lives – working in the garden, doing pottery again, walking in the mountains, and generally relaxing.  This did not really work out as planned, and we probably worked harder than ever!  We spent 2 weeks at the beginning of December in the north eastern part of South Africa, in an area known as Venda.  Venda was one of the ill-fated “homelands” that the previous white government of South Africa started in order to give self government to the black population.  The area is populated by the people belonging to the Venda tribe, and much of the area consists of the Soutpansberg Mountains.  There are many endemic species in these botanically rich mountains, and until recently, the area was poorly botanised.  Previously it was thought that Brachystegia, a large leguminous tree, did not occur in South Africa.  Brachystegia is the principal genus in Msasa woodland that covers large areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and as far north as Tanzania, where it colours the grassland red in spring.  A couple of years ago 3 colonies were discovered in Venda, to the great excitement of botanists in this country.  One of the notable features is that Brachystegia woodland has a number of endemic bird species associated with it, and these too occur in the tree populations in South Africa.  This has started a mini tourism boom in the area, which is bringing in much needed income for the local people.  Another species not previously thought to occur in South Africa is Aloe excelsa, and this too is present in Venda.   Needless to say, we returned from our trip laden with seeds – so much for a holiday!

Since our return to Cape Town we have spent most of our time moving and trying to keep cool in the heat.  In the Western Cape we are in the grips of the most horrendous drought with dam levels dropping (now at 40%) and water restrictions in place.  We are allowed to water our gardens for 30 minutes each week, and it is a challenge to keep our precious plants alive, particularly as the temperature is above 30°C most days.  Ironically, the southern Cape, only 300km away, is having floods with 250mm (10 inches) of rain in 12 hours!  It becomes bizarre when Robertson has its bridges washed away by abnormally heavy rain, and Worcester, just 80km away, receives 1mm of rain!  Coupled with the abnormally dry conditions, we have an arsonist doing the rounds of Cape Town.  We have had several major fires over the last week, and 10 smaller fires over this last weekend!  Don’t you just love the human race?  The helicopter pilots are having a lot of practice at scooping up sea water in special fire buckets and depositing it onto fires.  Whether the fynbos likes salt water, we are not sure, but with our water problems, that is what they are using.  It is amazing to watch their accuracy in depositing the water onto a line of fire, and it is extremely effective.

Our trip to Scotland in October went well, and despite rather gloomy weather, we enjoyed our stay very much.  Rod gave about 8 lectures and slide shows over 2 weeks to the members of the Scottish Rock Garden Society in various towns, and we travelled from south of Glasgow to the northernmost tip and back again.  We met many interesting people, had some delicious food and saw some wonderful scenery.

As mentioned in out last newsletter, we have decided not to print a catalogue this year, due to the cost of both printing and posting.  This means that from now onwards, you will have to use our website if you wish to order seeds.  We have tried to make our website more user friendly, and it is now possible to print out whichever section you require, and then you can peruse it in bed or in the bath!  We will include a “Beginner’s guide” at the end of this newsletter for those who are new to the Internet.  During the last month we have been scanning some of our many slides and illustrating the website, so in future you should be able to see what the plants look like.  This process has highlighted some glaring inadequacies in our photographic collection, but hopefully in time these will be rectified.

Staff-wise, we will have Darkie, Ondine, Cherry and Rachel’s mother working for us this year, and we will employ someone to help in the office.  After 10 years of working for us, Frances has left to work as a librarian again.

Payments:  due to the high commission that the banks are charging us on foreign cheques (R100 = USD17 = ₤9), we will unfortunately not be able to accept foreign cheques for small amounts.  Please ask before sending a cheque.  Several people have asked why we do not use Paypal – for some reason Paypal does not operate in South Africa and will not let South Africans register.  It is probably something to do with our foreign exchange regulations.  Please ask if you would like to pay by Paypal as the situation may change over the year.

We wish all of you a peaceful 2005, and we hope that the year does not continue in the same way as it started for those unfortunate people living near the Indian Ocean.  South Africa, amazingly, also felt the effects of the tsunami, and 3 or 4 people lost their lives.  Nothing in comparison to the horrors of the north though.

Best wishes and happy gardening

Rod & Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2006

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                December 2005

Dear Customer

Unbelievable as it may seem, it is already December again!  Perhaps it is our age, or the speed of modern day living, but time seems to fly faster and faster each year.

When we last wrote, the Cape was at the start of the rainy season, and we hoped for a good season.  We did receive reasonable rain over the winter, and by the end of October when the rain stopped, the average dam level in the SW Cape was 88%.  Some dams such as the Clanwilliam dam were overflowing, but Cape Town’s storage dams were slightly lower.  The rain even reached Namaqualand this winter, and the flower season was reasonable.  Further east along the coast, the rainfall was poor and there have been some devastating fires along the Garden Route.

All water restrictions have now been removed in Cape Town, and we can water our gardens again.  Whether this is a bright move by the City Council or not, remains to be seen, as our dam level is already down to 75%.  Cape Town’s water problems are by no means over – our population has increased astronomically over the last few years, due to both a high birth rate and population movement from rural areas and from countries to the north of us.  A new dam is being constructed at present, but the projections are that this will not solve our long-term water shortage.  In June we drilled a borehole in the middle of our driveway where it caused minimal disruption, and we now use that water for the garden and seed cleaning.

Now it is our turn for fires, and the SW Cape is burning in all directions.  Last week there were something like 10 fires in and around Cape Town, and once again the poor fynbos on the mountains is under threat.  We were supposed to be in Bainskloof about 100km from Cape Town last weekend to help remove alien vegetation, but on our arrival we were told to leave again as the whole area was burning.  It is frightening to see the mountains go up in flames.  There was a gale force wind blowing and within seconds entire mountain slopes were engulfed in flames, leaping 10 to 15 meters into the air.  The last fire in the area was only 10 years ago, which is barely enough time for most reseeding plants to build up seed reserves.  We are now hoping for a good wet winter next year to ensure maximum survival of the seedlings.

In July Rod acquired a digital camera (a Nikon single lens reflex) and he has had a lot of fun playing with it. The photos on the cover of the catalogue were all taken using it together with the lenses he had on his conventional film camera.  The biggest advantage of using it is when the wind is blowing and it is extremely difficult to make the Dierama or Moraea keep still.  Now he shoots 10 or 20 pictures, and invariably at least one of them is focused and perfect.

During 2005 we made several trips to the north east of South Africa, to the area called Venda.  We went once in summer, once in winter to see all the Aloes in flower, and once in October to collect seed.  It is one of our favourite areas to botanise, but alas it is also becoming over-run with people.  With all the political instability in Zimbabwe, only a few kilometers away, a lot of refugees are moving south and settling in Venda, which is very similar to the area they have left.  Each time we go there are more houses, more people and fewer trees.  The pictures of Stictocardia macalusoi and Adenia spinosa on the back cover of the catalogue were both taken on our last trip to Venda.  Stictocardia is a plant that is native to Kenya, and one wonders how it got to Venda where it grows in profusion along someone’s fence, making a wonderful show.  We were lucky with the Adenia spinosa – the plants were bristling with ripe seeds.  However, the temperature that day was over 40°C, and the seeds were extremely fiddly to collect.  By the time we had finished, we were both covered in Adenia juice, bleeding from contact with the spines, and pouring with sweat!  Adenias are poisonous, but we are both still alive so presumably the seeds and seed capsules are not poisonous!

Early in January we are heading off to Uganda for 2 weeks.  This time we are flying as we cannot afford the time to drive there (about 6 or 7 days from Cape Town, driving more or less non-stop).  We hope to see some high altitude flora in the Ruwenzori Mountains, and maybe see a gorilla or a chimpanzee or two!  We have had inoculations for yellow fever, meningitis and typhoid, and we are armed with mosquito nets and malaria pills, plus clothes to suit cold weather at 4000m above sea level, and clothes to suit hot humid weather at the equator!  More about that in the next newsletter.

We still love working from home again, and we often wonder why we had to go through all those moves to make us realise how lucky we are at home!  Our garden is thriving with the little bit of extra water it is getting this summer and our tiny 1 x 2 meter swimming pool gets a lot of use, particularly after our frequent fights with the bank, the post office, the courier, the income tax office, the Cape Town city council etc etc!

Our employees remain the same – Darkie, Denise, Cherie, Ondine and Rachel’s mother.  Ondine’s oldest child goes to school next year, and so the years go by!  Our 3 cats are all still with us, but 2 are old and every time we go away we wonder if they will still be here when we get back.  All of them are good at lying on whatever one is trying to do, and fiddling with the computer keyboards!

The tissue culture lab at our smallholding at Brackenfell is doing well, and this year Andy planted a large number of coloured arums (Zantedeschia) in pots.  They are all in full flower now, and he has been having fun selling them as Christmas presents at various craft markets around Cape Town.  They are a fairly challenging crop to grow successfully, and he is justifiably proud of the plants.  We have almost finished clearing all the alien vegetation on the property (mostly Australian acacias) and the fynbos in the undeveloped area is doing well.  We have planted several rare and endangered species that used to occur in Brackenfell, and most of them are thriving in the sand. We will need to water them this summer as they are small still and the ground is very dry already.  There is no sign of any summer rain this year unfortunately.

Happy seed sowing and let’s once again hope for a peaceful 2006,

Rod and Rachel Saunders

 

From the Archives: Newsletter July 2004

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July 2004

Dear plant lovers,

Welcome to the July supplementary catalogue.  As usual, the main thing on our minds at present is the weather.  We are now into our 3rd or 4th year of drought, and we fear that this is a consequence of global warming. Rainfall is down again this year, but the distribution pattern has been better than last year so it seems as though there will be a floral display of sorts in Nieuwoudtville and Namaqualand.  However, if we do not have a substantial fall within the next 2 weeks, the displays will be early and short lived.  Agriculturally the next year could be disastrous as the main storage dams in the Western Cape are only 36% full, and we are already more than half way through the winter.  All we can do is hope for late rain, much as happened last year.

Our trip to the Drakensberg early in December was excellent, and we saw many special plants in flower that we normally only see in seed.  Probably the most striking of these was Zaluzianskya ovata with its bi-coloured orange and pink flowers cascading off the crags.  Sani Pass was unforgettable with Eucomis schijfii, Cyrtanthus flanaganii, Moraea alticola, several species of Geranium, Sutherlandia montana, Delosperma nubigena, various Crassula species, Senecio macrospermus, Urginea macrocentra, Dianthus basuticus, Sebaea spathulata and many others in full flower. The only problem in visiting the Drakensberg in summer is the weather.  By midday there is usually a storm brewing and you don’t want to be botanizing on high ground for fear of lightning strikes.  Normally the storms last an hour or so, so if we are in an interesting area we sit in the car and wait for it to pass, then start flower hunting again.  We combined this trip with a visit to Swaziland and Mpumalanga which were both extremely dry still.  The rain in these areas generally starts in September or October and continues through the summer, tailing off in March. This year the rain only started in late December, and by then it was too late for sowing maize in many areas.  We had a funny experience in Swaziland – we spent 2 nights in a game reserve in the east of the country, on the Mozambique border.  One evening we went for a walk and were accompanied by a female ostrich!  Every time we stopped to look at plants, she stopped and found something to eat, when we went on, she followed closely behind us.  We then met a family of tiny baby warthogs who seemed to have lost their mother.  They took one look at us and decided that we were friendly, so dashed up to us squealing loudly.  We nearly had a fit as mother warthogs are extremely fierce, and if she had followed them, she would have attacked us!  We turned round and ran in the opposite direction as fast as we could, and so did our ostrich!  When we finally got back to the campsite, the ostrich had a snack of bread, and then settled down next to our car for the night.  A friend for life!

This area of Swaziland was drought struck, while in the west they had had floods!  Global warming has certainly made the weather most unpredictable with wetter, drier, warmer and colder weather than usual, all over the world.

On this same trip we spent a lovely day in the Leolo Mountains looking at and photographing Zantedeschia jucunda, a very beautiful plant with deep yellow flowers.

The weather has had a large effect on our seed harvesting this year.  Not only have many species not set seed, but those that have set, have ripe seed much later than usual.  Normally many tree species have ripe seed in May or June – this year most were still green and we will have to go collecting again this month.

Later this year (in October) we are off to Scotland on a lecture tour as guests of the Scottish Rock Garden Society.  We are both looking forward to it as we have not traveled much in Scotland before.  Rod will be giving about 8 slide shows and lectures, and we will probably arrive home exhausted, wet and cold!  We will leave our car in Johannesburg and on our return, will spend a week Aloe seed collecting before driving home to Cape Town.  Many of the summer rainfall Aloe species flower during the winter months, colouring the brown drab grasslands with their brilliant orange or pink flowers.  Most have ripe seed in October, and normally we collect seeds of 20 to 30 species, making it a very worthwhile field trip.

And now for a whole lot of changes to our business!  Since Silverhill Seeds started about 12 years ago, we have been getting bigger and bigger, with a larger catalogue each year and more employees to help.  We are away more often (up to 6 months of each year) and we travel up to 80 000km per year.  All our leisure activities have had to go and unfortunately, all of this has been accompanied by the loss of youth!  We are both tired and we find it more and more difficult to keep up with the work load.  So we are going to try to scale down a bit.  The first thing we will do is stop producing a printed catalogue.  We regret this, but the cost of printing and sending the catalogue out each year has become enormous.  So from January next year, please look at our website.  We update the website at least once a week so it is far more accurate than a printed catalogue, and we are streamlining the downloading of the catalogue, so those of you who like a printed version can print your own.  We apologize to those of you who are not computer literate, but please don’t despair!  Find a relative or friend who can download the catalogue for you, and then place your order as before – by fax, letter or e mail.  At the same time we will try to decrease the number of species that we collect.  Instead of traveling to the far reaches of the country three times per year, we will go once, and if we don’t find seed of some species, that is too bad!  We would like to spend more time in the mountains of the SW Cape, so hopefully the number of species from this area will increase.

The second change will be that we are going to close down for 2 months at the end of the year – December 2004 and January 2005.  December is a bad month for a mail order business anyway due to Christmas – we normally stop sending out parcels early in December as many get lost, and January is usually the hottest month of the year, horrible for working!  What we are planning to do during this time is catch up on gardening, on pottery and on everything else that has been abandoned for years!  Both of us are keen potters and we have a large gas fired kiln which has been standing idle for about 10 years.  We will start working again in February, so please look at our website then.  We will send out a letter to all of you explaining how the website works and how to order.

The third change will be our employees.  Ondine, Cherry and Darkie will probably stay with us, but Frances (and probably Antonia) will be leaving.  Rachel’s mother will also continue to work for us, still unpaid!

And finally, believe it or not, we will be moving yet again, and now we will be completing the circle as we are moving back home again!!  The premises at Diep River are spacious and light, but we are finding the driving to and fro a nuisance.  At present our personal botanical library is at Diep River and as Rod still works at home cleaning seed, he has to drive to Diep River each time he wants to identify a plant!  The distance is only 8km, but this can sometimes take an hour as there is no direct route between the two localities.  With the wisdom of hindsight, we should have reorganized our house in the first place and stayed there!  We have now modified our garage and we will work in the garage and the back room of our house, and hopefully the business will not take over our entire house, as happened previously.  We will have separate phones for the business and home, and will notify you about the new fax and phone numbers later.

After all that, there is nothing left but to wish you all happy plant growing and may your weather be better than ours!

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2004

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Newsletter  January 2004

Dear plant lover,

It seems such a long time ago that we wrote the last newsletter in July – so much has happened and the time has sped past.

Firstly we have taken the plunge and moved Silverhill Seeds and Books to commercial premises in Diep River, a suburb about 8km from our house in Kenilworth in Cape Town.  Please note the change in telephone and fax numbers on our letter head.  All other details – postal address and e mail address remain the same, but if you wish to come and collect your seeds, please phone beforehand and find out where we are.  The premises we now occupy are very pleasant in a light industrial/commercial park.  We are in the loft of a building, we have about 200m2 of space, sufficient parking for all our cars and we look out over the roof tops towards Table Mountain.  We have a garden of about 1 meter2 and we are in the process of planting up a number of pots to beautify our parking area.  The factory opposite us manufactures bullet proof vests, but there are also a number of more civilised businesses, such as several book suppliers, furniture manufacturers and computer consultants in the Park, so we are not alone.  The whole complex is surrounded by a large wall and is patrolled regularly by security guards, and we feel safe working here at weekends and after hours.  We all miss the cat, the garden and the swimming pool at our previous premises, but we do not miss the neighbour!  Rod and Darkie have yet to make the move to Diep River (they are still working in Kenilworth), but they will both move in the New Year.  It is a pity that moves are always accompanied by the spending of large amounts of money – insulation in the ceilings, air conditioners, new shelving, window blinds, etc etc, but hopefully this is the last move for many years!

Secondly, some bad news – for the first time in 12 years, our £ and US$ prices have had to increase this year.  Since we took over Parsley’s Cape Seeds many years ago, our prices have remained £1.20 or US$2 per packet.  Over the years the South African rand devalued markedly, and this was sufficient to keep up with our inflation, and it allowed us to keep the prices the same.  However, this year the rand has strengthened by over 30%, our inflation rate is about 8%, and finally we can no longer put off a price increase.  So prices are now £1.80 or US$3 per packet.  We are sorry about this, but everything from paper to postage to petrol to potting soil has increased in price, and we can no longer keep up.

And thirdly, the Biodiversity Bill.  The Bill (mentioned in our last newsletter) is going through Parliament, more or less unchanged, and we await the results anxiously.  One of the driving forces for the Bill is that certain individuals in South Africa feel that the world has stolen our flora, and little has come back to South Africa in the way of royalties for plants such as Freesias, Gladioli and Proteas, all originally from this country.  What they seem to have conveniently forgotten about is that South Africa makes a lot of money from flora that we have imported from elsewhere – the vines that feed our huge wine industry, the wheat and tobacco and fruit and cut flowers such as roses – and we certainly don’t pay royalties to the countries of origin of these products!  Anyway, what we are now trying to do is to encourage any of you, our customers, who make selections from our seeds, or who use our seeds for a hybridisation programme, or for a pharmaceutical programme, to ask permission before you do this.  We will ask you to sign an agreement with us so that if you produce a “winning plant” or a “miracle cure”, a small royalty is paid back to South Africa.  We hope that this will help to alleviate any future problems.

At present the whole sub-continent of Africa is in the grip of a most horrendous drought.  Both summer and winter rainfall regions are very dry and what rain does fall is in the form of light showers which quickly evaporate.  The SW Cape had its first good front of the winter in August this year (normally in May) and this was the first rain that Namaqualand and the Nieuwoudtville areas received..  The front was accompanied by extreme cold with snow falling and lying on Table Mountain in Cape Town for 2 days running.  On some of the inland ranges, there was snow right down to about 200 meters above sea level, and Stellenbosch had snow almost into the town.  The same storm drove a container ship Maersk Zeeland onto the beach at Milnerton, right outside the Cape Town harbour.  It took a dredger and our most powerful salvage tugs about 6 weeks to get the ship off the sand bank – we thought it was there forever!  Some of the containers contained toxic chemicals (these containers were lifted off the ship by helicopter) and one was filled with Tulip bulbs!

Coinciding with the cold front, the Indigenous Bulb Association of South Africa held its conference at a hot spring in Worcester.  We are both on the IBSA committee, so were both very involved in this conference, which was held in one of the worst “flower years” ever!  Nobody had enough warm clothes and the hot spring pools were one of the most popular places at the resort!  Fortunately the weather cleared up for the field trips, but because of the previous dry conditions there were very few bulbs in flower to show the delegates, and we had to resort to admiring individual plants instead of the big sheets of flowers that we had hoped for.

In Namaqualand there was no floral display at all in August or September.  A few daring annuals germinated in August after the rain, and they provided a small display in October, long after all the tourists had gone home!  Fortunately for us, our annuals at the tissue culture lab in Brackenfell flowered well and produced a lot of seed, so we were able to collect that to boost our stocks.  One of our new offers is Dorotheanthus in separate colours, rather than mixed.  We have a nice orange selection, a yellow with a red eye (used to be Dorotheanthus occulata in some of the old books), and a shocking pink, a hue which is bright enough to make you blink!

A result of the fire we had in February at the lab property was a wonderful display of both annuals and bulbs in September.  The area had not burned for many years, and the first flowers were Haemanthus pubescens ssp pubescens in March.  There were probably 50 or 60 plants in flower, and they were spectacular against the black ground.  Then in August and September the annuals began and so did the Pelargonium triste, Babiana ambigua and ringens, Wurmbea species, Gladiolus carinatus, several orchids and hundreds of bright yellow sweetly scented Moraea fugax.  In October Ixia curta flowered in places we did not know they existed and then suddenly, everything dried up, went to seed and now there is nothing to see bar sand, Proteas and restios.  All our seed cleaning trash together with all our old seed is used as mulch at Brackenfell, and this year our first Protea plant from this “trash” flowered – a lovely Protea burchellii!

Our big multi-span glasshouse at Brackenfell is now fully operational and equipped with fans and wet walls, and when the temperature is 35°C outside, it is a pleasant 24°C inside.  The first plants are in the house and are growing well.  At Brackenfell we are always short of good quality water (both our boreholes produce slightly brack water), so we installed 11 large water tanks, each holding 10 000 liters, to collect the rainwater that runs off the multi-span roof.  It takes only 50mm of rain to fill all 11 tanks, so our tanks have been overflowing almost all winter!  Rod and Andy are now in the process of installing a pump and watering system so that the water can be used inside the house.

Our week in the Drakensberg in July at the Mountain Club’s annual camp was most relaxing.  The ‘Berg in winter is one of the most beautiful places imaginable – clear blue skies and grass in every shade of brown, but we had forgotten how cold it is! Most mornings start at about -8°C just before sunrise, but as soon as the sun reaches the tent, the temperature rises fast until by tea time it is about 20°C and one is walking in shorts and T-shirts and swimming in every pool one finds (well, some of us are!).  We didn’t mention plants once during the whole week, which must be a record, but we made up for it in the next week, when we went to Mozambique.  We went on a field trip to the southern part of Mozambique with about 12 of the most knowledgeable plant people we have ever met from the Nelspruit area (in the eastern part of the country), and the talk from morning to night was plants!  It was a most stimulating trip and we are now itching to get back to see more of Mozambique, although malaria is still a big worry, as are land mines.

The minute this catalogue has been delivered to the printer, we are leaving for the eastern Cape and the Nelspruit area to look for early flowering plants.  Normally our first trip to the summer rainfall areas is in January, and each year we miss a number of plants that flower in spring and early summer.  Last year when we went north for the solar eclipse we got a glimpse of some interesting areas, but the lack of rain meant few flowers.  This year the rain has been a little better, so we hope to find some species in flower.

Our staff situation remains the same as last year with Frances, Ondine, Darkie, Antonia, Cherry and Rachel’s mother all still with us.  For all of them the move to Diep River has been advantageous as all of them live very close to our office.  The only people who now have to travel are Darkie and us!

Happy gardening and we all hope for rain and a peaceful year,

Rod & Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter July 2003

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July 2003

Dear Plant lover,

This newsletter starts where we left off in December 2002 – the solar eclipse.  In our last newsletter, we were about to leave home to see the total solar eclipse, in the north of South Africa, about 2 000km from Cape Town.  We joined about 70 000 other people who had rushed up to the north for the same purpose, and we camped the night before at some hot springs close by.  Early the next morning we drove a further 70km to the centre line of the eclipse, and staked our claim to a square meter of roadside, from whence to view the sun.  Totality was at 8am, and by 7am, we were surrounded by about 7 000 or more people.  The atmosphere was festive and the people came in all shapes and sizes and every colour from the pale skins of tourists from mid-winter in Europe, to the blackest of black Africans.  There were people who had the latest high-tech equipment in the form of cameras and telescopes and fancy motorcars, to those on bicycles, in buses and in taxis, and the local police in their vans, all clutching their plastic viewing glasses for protecting their eyes!  An interesting aside: all the viewing glasses were made by disabled local people.  All the local shops shut and everything ground to a halt for an hour or so.

At the commencement of the eclipse, cloud started to move in over the viewing area and for the next hour while it was all unfolding, we only obtained periodic glimpses of the sun, and by just before 8am we were all fully reconciled to not seeing the eclipse at all.  It steadily got darker and darker, until at the point of 95% totality, a hush descended on the crowd although we couldn’t even see the sun at that stage!  We were rewarded for our patience – at the point of totality, the clouds cleared and we were able to see one of the most awesomely simple and beautiful images that we have ever seen.  It affected everyone similarly, and a collective 7 000 person gasp went out.  The moon, now in front of the sun, was lit by the most ethereal light from our own earth’s reflection and wasn’t black at all, and was surrounded by a magnificent solar flare.  A beautiful sight, for a minute!  It then started to get light again, the clouds returned, and it was all over.

The traffic jam back to Johannesburg was 69km long of stop start traffic!  Luckily we had anticipated this problem, so avoided the main road, botanised along the way, and had a most peaceful trip back home.

Ironically, the entire area was completely drought struck, and had not had any rain for 12 months.  And those wretched clouds that disappointed so many viewers, did not bring one drop of rain!

Now that same drought has moved southwards and is affecting the western Cape’s winter rainfall.  So far it has been one the driest winters on record, and although a few showers have fallen in Cape Town, the floral areas of Nieuwoudtville and Namaqualand have had no rain.  This means that the floral displays in these areas will probably be non-existent.  On the other hand, east of Cape Town towards Port Elizabeth, and the Little Karoo have had excellent rain and should have good floral displays in spring.  The cold fronts that bring rain to Cape Town and the north, seem to be missing us completely and dropping their rain on the land to the east of us.

We have recently returned from a very rushed trip to the two most far flung areas we could find.  We drove from Cape Town to the north east of South Africa, where we eventually landed up about 110km from Maputo in Mozambique.  And 3 days later we were a mere 100km from the Atlantic Ocean in Namibia!  Namibia had had late rain and was lush and green from Windhoek northwards.  All the roadside plants were in flower – Barlerias, Sesamums, Crotalarias, Aptosimum species, Cleomes, beautiful ground cover Indigoferas, Monsonias and many others.  Normally by May all the vegetation along the roads is dry and brown, so this year was exceptional.  We walked a bit in the Brandberg, a notoriously dry area, and found a beautiful species of Sarcocaulon in full flower.

In mid-July we are off to spend a week in the Drakensberg, walking in icy cold and perhaps in snow without a plant in sight, followed by a week in southern Mozambique, botanising and hopefully finding some exciting trees and shrubs.

Some very disturbing news from South Africa is the new Biodiversity Bill that is shortly going before Parliament.  It will, if passed in its present state, close us down, as it prohibits the collection and sale of seed for any purpose, without a multitude of permits.  At present we operate with permits, but we have one permit for all the species we sell and one export permit.  The new Bill specifies that we will require a different permit for each species, and all growers of native South African plants will also require permits to grow these species in their nurseries.  We will have to apply for 2000 or more permits each year – the mind boggles!  We hope that sanity will prevail, and that this legislation is modified before it goes any further.

A change in our book catalogue is that we are now quoting all book prices in our own currency, in South African rands.  The reason for this is that in the past 6 months, our currency has fluctuated wildly.  Last year it was valued at R13 to the US$.  Today it is R7.90 to the US$.  That means that if we charge R500 for a book, last year it was US$38, and this year it is $63!  We have frequently had to sell books this year at a lower price than we paid for them.  So, we will try quoting in SA rands, and perhaps that will work better.  It is nice having a strong currency again, but it really needs to stabilise as at present it is changing drastically from day to day.

And finally, Silverhill Seeds may have to move yet again, and this move will involve new telephone and fax numbers.  At present we run our business from a house in a suburb of Cape Town, and one of our neighbours has lodged a complaint with the City Council about the business.  She is objecting on a matter of principle – she does not want any businesses in residential suburbs, and she has no complaint about us per se.  So now we have had to apply to the Council for permission to continue to operate from our house.  If our application is refused, we will have to move, and this time we will move to a commercial or light industrial complex.  We have found a new office in case we have to go, but we hope that we will get permission to stay.  We are all really happy here, the cat that has moved in is delighted to have us, we have a thriving vegetable garden behind the house and the swimming pool in the garden is great.  Neighbours!!  This one is what the City Council calls a “lace curtain twitcher” – she obviously has too little to do, and spends a fair bit of each day interfering in other people’s business.  Apart from us, she is also trying to close down a local Clinic (a very large concern), and is attempting to get rid of all the prostitutes who ply their trade in the area.  So we are in good (or bad!) company!

Happy gardening and best wishes,

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2003

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January 2003

Dear Plantsperson,

Welcome to our 2003 catalogue of seeds and books.

Every year our collecting schedules change, dictated by drought, fire and where we happen to be at a particular time.  In this catalogue there are a number of new entries and some omissions.  For the first time we are offering seeds of Romulea hantamensis (photo on inside front cover), a species with a reputation of being difficult to germinate (a period of cold stratification of the seeds (4 weeks at 4°C) should stimulate germination).  We look forward to hearing of your results.  This year we concentrated on Namaqualand and the Roggeveld, and visited the areas 5 or 6 times for photography and seed.  This means, inevitably, that other areas were neglected, so some species have disappeared off the list.  Our peak seed collecting time is from August to December, and it is always difficult to decide where to go as no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot be everywhere at the same time!  In our last newsletter (July 2002) we wondered whether the SW Cape would get good winter rain, and yes we did.  Many of the cold fronts which bear the rain reached Namaqualand and moved eastwards along the coast, resulting in bumper wheat crops in the winter rainfall areas.  The summer rainfall areas had a dry summer last year, and so far this year is even worse.  The summer rains normally start in October and continue until March or April.  So far most areas have had no rain at all, and extremely high temperatures.  Australia is in the same situation and is experiencing the worst drought for decades.

The asbestos saga still drags on!  We can no longer afford to spend any more money on a lost cause – every way we turned we landed up in dead ends, literally!  All our key witnesses who may have been able to shed light on the origin of the waste are either dead or dying, have Alzheimer’s disease or were too young when it happened!  We have now decided to cover the contaminated area with soil, paving and weed matting, and we will prevent any further development of the site.

Earlier in the year at the height of the asbestos saga, we decided to have a break, and we went away to the “Wild Coast” for a week, to forget about the problems at home!  South Africa has some magnificent lonely beaches, and the Wild Coast (in the east of the country) has some of the best (at least until the developers find them!).  However, on returning home it was “back to reality” and we found that we could hardly get into our house because of book and seed deliveries that had piled up in our entrance hall.  The pattern was repeated throughout the entire house, and we suddenly realised that apart from the kitchen, bathroom and our bedroom, our whole house had been taken over by the business.  We decided there and then that the business had to move!  Fate intervened and the very next day we found a property about 5 minutes walk away from our house so Silverhill now has its own premises, and we have our house back!

This spring we guided a group of American plants people to the flower displays of the Northern and Western Cape.  Floral displays in the more arid areas of the country are really fickle and often shortlived, but intensely beautiful while they last.  Over the years we have become a little jaded I think, and seeing the display through the eyes of visitors who have no idea what to expect is refreshing and strengthens ones appreciation of the beauty.  This year the Western Karoo, and particularly the Hantamsberg, Calvinia and the Roggeveld Plateau produced some of the best floral displays we have ever seen.  We went again 10 days later on our own, and it was as though it had never happened.  Such is the brevity of displays in these arid areas.

In June/July we went on our customary trip to the north of Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe and Botswana.  We obtained a little seed, though many of the trees had not even flowered in the last season because of the drought in the area.  The whole political situation in Zimbabwe is such a disaster and the people so desperate, that it is unlikely we will be back until there has been a change of government.  Every evening when we had our shower (standing under a tree under a bucket full of water), we had problems with swarms of wild bees, desperately looking for water.  We found that the only way to cope with them was to give them their own dedicated paper plate full of water, and then they left us alone!

The dry conditions seem to have brought out a large number of impressive snakes.  Normally years go by and if we see one or two snakes, that is a lot.  This year we have seen about 9 so far – some very large cobras, usually moving quickly across the road, and many puffadders lying in the sun on the road, and requiring a prod with a long stick to make them move!  We normally see these snakes immediately after we have been wandering through the thick bush in our sandals, and it makes us shudder!

Travel in Africa has other dangers apart from bees and snakes.  While picking up Acacia pods under a tree in the bushveld miles from anywhere, Rachel felt a thorn prick her.  She looked at it, and to her horror saw a hypodermic syringe needle stuck deeply into her thumb.  One’s first reaction is blind panic since Aids/HIV in Africa is epidemic and we were all for rushing off to the nearest clinic and starting anti-HIV treatment.  However, sanity prevailed, and apart from making the wound bleed profusely and washing her hand, we did nothing.  The number of documented cases of HIV being transmitted by needle pricks is extremely low, and two HIV tests (3 weeks and 3 months later) were both negative.  Phew!

Modern taxonomy is playing havoc with our plant names, and over the last few years we have seen, amongst many others, Homerias and Galaxias disappear and reappear as Moraeas, Sarcocaulons are now Monsonias, and the whole family Mesembryanthemaceae has gone into Aizoaceae!  There is, no doubt, good scientific justification for these changes, but it is a pity since many of the genera that have disappeared were cohesive and instantly recognisable groups of plants.  Some of the changes are reflected in our catalogue (for example Sutherlandia is now Lessertia, Homerias are sold as Moraeas), but some we have not changed as we stubbornly refuse to accept the new taxonomy!  So Galaxias are still Galaxias, and Sarcocaulons are still Sarcocaulons.  I suppose we will have to change eventually, but for the moment we will remain out of date.

When wandering around looking for seed, we often come across horticulturally worth while plants.  On the inside of the back cover is a picture of some of our Ornithogalum hybrids which we have selected and bred, and are now being produced by Frontier lab.  They have immense potential as pot plants as well as cut flowers.  At present we have a colour range from dark orange through peach shades to yellow, cream and white.  There must have been about 3 or 4 000 of them in flower this spring in our glasshouse – they were spectacular and we spent a fair bit of time oohing and aahing over them!  The tissue culture lab is busy and doing well, as is the book business.  Not only do we travel around seed hunting now, but we visit as many second hand book shops as possible looking for out of print botanical books.

In our new premises we have been be-friended by a cat.  His past owner (our neighbour) moved on and left him behind, so he has more or less moved into Silverhill.  All our staff look after him and give him more fuss that he can cope with!

Our human staff compliment remains the same as last year, all one year older, and they all seem to be happy with the move.  Maybe having a swimming pool in the garden helps!  Rachel’s mother still works for us every day, and is now muttering about the lack of a salary for all her labour!

When ordering, please remember to put your name and address on the order.  This year we had three nameless orders which are still sitting here waiting to be claimed.  Please also remember to put your full name and address on your e mails – “John” or “Jane” does not help us much!  Two more requests – please order in alphabetical order as it makes completing the order much quicker and simpler, and please try to organise your order so that the Bulbs are all together, the Succulents together, etc, instead of mixing them all into one list.  It really makes a huge difference to the people finding the seeds, and the people writing the invoice.  Thanks.

The system with phytosanitary certificates for the USA orders seems to be working well, but we have had to increase our charges to US$3 per order.  The post office official in Chicago where Rachel’s brother posts the parcels was very suspicious of all the little boxes at first, but is now perfectly happy with them.

Finally, while this catalogue is at the printer we are off to see the total solar eclipse in the far northern part of South Africa.  Personally, we both think that we are a bit daft – to drive 2000km to see a 90 second period of darkness, then drive 2000km home again is not really sane!  However it is the last chance in Rod’s lifetime that he will get to see a total eclipse (the next one is in 30 years time!), so off we go!  We will tell you about it in the next news letter – meanwhile, happy gardening!

Best wishes

Rod & Rachel Saunders