From the Archives: Newsletter July 2002

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July 2002

Dear plants person,

The catalogue and newsletter are a little late this year – we decided to take a break in late June, and go walking in the Spanish Pyrenees with Rachel’s sister and brother-in-law.  For 3 weeks we didn’t mention seeds, plants or books and we enjoyed someone else’s flora for a change.  The Rhododendrons were flowering high in the mountains, as were various Liliums, and they were magnificent.  We also saw Gentians growing wild for the first time among the last patches of snow.  The beech and oak forests on the lower mountain slopes were beautiful as well as being cool and damp – a lovely contrast to the hot sun outside.  However, it is now back to the grindstone!

Earlier in the year we decided to put down a borehole to increase our water supply on the property at Brackenfell.  We obtained the services of a geophysicist who surveyed the property and indicated a site where we could expect to find water.  While he was walking round the property, we asked him innocently about some strange white material that we had seen occasionally emerging from the sand.  The bombshell that he dropped is still with us now – he told us that the compound was asbestos waste!  We subsequently discovered that in the 1970s before we owned the property, someone had dumped 5 000 m3 of asbestos processing waste on the property to fill sand mining pits and to level the ground.  The asbestos had been covered with a layer of sand and only when we dug in the area or when moles dug through it, did it become visible.  Obviously this is a huge health hazard and is highly illegal.  We have spent the last 6 months with lawyers, Government officials, etc assessing liability, who to blame, and what we can do to rectify the matter.  The outcome is that “the buck stops with us” and it is our problem!  Proving who did what is a difficult task at the best of times, and when one is working 30 years after the event, it becomes almost impossible.  Providing that the material is covered or is wet, the asbestos fibres are not a danger.  Due to the prohibitive expense of trying to remove all the waste, we will probably have to cover the area with sand, demarcate it in some way, and write a clause into the title deeds of the property preventing anyone from developing that area (about 1 hectare) in the future.  This whole episode made us realise the inadequacies in the enforcement of environmental law in South Africa, and it also occupied a lot of time and shot our stress levels sky high!

Oh, you may wonder about the borehole!  On drilling the hole (luckily missing the asbestos!) we struck water at 75 meters and the hole delivers more than 10 000 liters per hour!  So there was some good news from the whole fiasco.

The bad news, apart from the asbestos, is that we did not have much time this year for travelling, and our collecting was severely curtailed.  Hopefully this will be rectified in the second half of the year.

While we were stuck at home consulting with lawyers, etc., we concentrated on extending our book list, and have been obtaining quite a number of older out of print books.  You will see from the enclosed list that there are many more titles than previously.  We now visit all the second hand book shops that we pass on our seed collecting trips, to see what we can find.

Frontier Laboratory is doing well and it gives us all a great deal of pleasure.  Andy has just erected a growing tunnel that is the talk of the neighbourhood as, at night when the lights come on, you can see it from miles away.  It has been equipped with rolling tables and heating as well as cooling.  The plants are responding well to their new environment and we are getting more growth out of them than ever before.  At night during the winter, the temperature at Brackenfell frequently drops to about 2°C, and now we can keep the temperature in the tunnel above 8°C, which obviously makes a difference to growth.

Our sowing of annual seeds was delayed this season when we found that half the trial beds we had made were on top of the asbestos!  We had to prepare new beds, sterilise the soil and get the seeds sown in a rush, resulting in uneven germination.  Some of the seeds were simply sown too late (normally we sow in March or April when the high summer temperatures have decreased) and they have not germinated well.  Others have germinated but are still tiny.  We will wait and see what happens in the spring.

As we write this, the rain is pouring down, though whether this cold front is reaching Namaqualand we are not sure.  The Cape Peninsula has had good rain so far this winter, and some of the fronts have reached the Karoo and Namaqualand, so there should be good floral displays.

The summer rainfall areas of South Africa had bad rain this summer, and they are very dry.  They had plenty of rain before Christmas, and then it dried up completely and virtually none fell for the rest of the season.  This means that the winter fires have been particularly bad this year, and the vegetation is suffering.  We are told it is due to El Nino again.

Finally, we cannot please everybody!  Someone in the USA published an article about Silverhill Seeds on a gardening website on the Internet, describing us as “a pair of aged colonials travelling through Africa plundering and pillaging the veld as we go, and depriving the local inhabitants of a livelihood”!!  We suppose that “aged colonials” is a trifle more flattering that “imperialists” or “capitalist pigs”, but it provided us with a wonderful mental picture!

On that note we wish you well with your seed sowing and with your plant collections.

Best wishes

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2002

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January 2002

Dear Plant lovers

As I read last year’s newsletter (January 2001), we were facing an uncertain winter which we hoped would not be the same as the previous disastrously dry season.  By May we had still not had a drop of rain, the vegetation was bone dry and we feared the worst.  Then the rains began, with heavy regular falls in the Western Cape and into Namaqualand, and this continued until September and October.  In the past the Cape has earned its name “The Cape of Storms”, and this year we had some good examples.  One particular storm delivered over 150mm of rain in 24 hours.  Another cold front a week later brought 17m waves crashing against the Cape Peninsula and this played havoc with the shipping – one ship aground and two wrecks in 12 hours!  On the same day we were without power for long periods due to the wind blowing the power lines together.

The rain and cold fronts did however do several things – all our dams are still 98% full, the wheat farmers had a bumper crop, and we have had one of the most impressive flower displays in years.  The bulb display at Nieuwoudtville was possibly the best that we have ever seen, and because of extended cold conditions in July and early August, all the early flowering bulbs were delayed and flowered much later, together with the later species.  This resulted in stupendous displays all the way from Cape Town right up into Namaqualand and Springbok.  Those of you who visited the Cape this spring will agree, and if it was your first visit, it will be a while before you see its equal.  The picture of Romulea sabulosa on the cover was taken at Nieuwoudtville this season.

Our trip to Zambia was successful, but we did not get as far as we would have liked.  We found it very expensive (with fuel at over US$1 per liter) and it is a cash only society so we were unable to use our credit cards.  We simply ran out of money and we realised that if we went further north, we probably wouldn’t have enough money for fuel to get home again!  We had also not realised how vast the country is and the distances between centres is huge.  We started in the west and drove north along the Zambezi River, then east to Lusaka along some of the worst roads imaginable.  We then intended driving north to the Tanzanian border, but only got about half way before turning south again.  The trees were magnificent and we saw many interesting orchids, shrubs and perennials.  As we were there in the dry season, all the bulbous plants were dormant.

We then drove back south through Zimbabwe and spent a profitable two weeks there.  All the Aloes were in full flower, and the veld was beautiful.  We took the opportunity of visiting the Chimanimani Mountains in the east of the country for a few days, and despite it being the height of the dry season, we experienced heavy rain while walking in the mountains.  This brought all the rivers down in flood and prevented us from getting back to our vehicle at the bottom of the mountain and on the other side of the river!  After some really hair raising river crossings and getting soaked and extremely cold, we finally found refuge in a cave where we waited for two days for the weather to clear (meanwhile running out of food!).  We returned to the area some two months later and we couldn’t believe it was the same place – it was blazing hot and bone dry!

September the 11th and all that that disastrous day brought, has had all sorts of effects on us all.  Air transport is still disrupted and we now have to book freight well in advance.  The proposed irradiation of mail in the USA is still an unknown factor, and we will have to see whether we can still send seed by post.  We have to be very careful when treating seeds with insecticide as most insecticides consist of white powder, which is treated with great suspicion all over the world.

The tissue culture laboratory is in full production and is a wonderful environment for the people working there.  Andy (our partner) is already talking about expansion!  See the lab on the catalogue cover, with our annual trial beds in the foreground.

Although we had no intention of going overseas this year, Andy convinced us that we should visit the Horticultural Trade Fair in Amsterdam in November, to see what international horticulture and floriculture is doing.  So we braved flying, had a wonderful time and we all came home fired with enthusiasm.  We made many new contacts, renewed acquaintances with old customers and found that the Horticultural Fair was a good place to talk business in a relaxed way.

On returning to Cape Town, we decided to buy a book business, and you will find our larger book list included in this catalogue.  We bought Honingklip Books, run by Walter and his late wife Ruth Middelmann for many years.  Walter and Ruth were the original owners of our seed company, so in a way, the books have come home again!  Walter is now over 90 and he found that the books were becoming too much for him to cope with on his own, so he asked us if we could cope with them as well as the seeds.  We both love books, and Frances is a trained librarian, so we were happy to take the business over.  Our list contains mainly current books that are still in print, but whenever possible, we do sell old books long out of print.  Please ask us about any book that you are looking for and we will see if we can find it for you.

American customers:  According to new legislation in the USA, from the 22nd January, all seed being imported into the USA has to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate.  Many orders are small, and it simply wouldn’t be worth it to get a phyto for $12 for an order worth less than that amount.  We have to drive into the centre of Cape Town to get the certificates, and the thought of carrying 20 parcels into the city once or twice a week fills us all with horror.  So we have decided to try the following system with the help of Rachel’s brother and sister-in-law who live in Chicago.  We will complete all orders for the USA as we receive them, and each week we will send all the orders in one large box accompanied by one phyto to Rachel’s brother.  Either he or his wife will then re-pack the seeds and send them out to each customer.  This week we sent one consignment in this way, and if it works, we will continue in 2002.  This means that each customer will only have to pay a small portion of the fee for the phyto (probably about $1 or $2 per person) instead of $12.  If this system does not work, we will have to think again.

Our staff situation remains more or less the same.  Ondine is on four months maternity leave and will be back in February just in time to help with the rush of orders.  She had a baby girl in October and appropriately named her Erica.  Rachel’s mother is still going strong and mutters about customers who don’t order their seeds alphabetically and according to the categories in the catalogue!  Frances’s teenagers are still, unfortunately, teenagers, and Darkie’s grandchild is now 8.  We have several part time helpers who are becoming more full time as we get busier each year.  At present they are Cherry, Antonia and Andrea.

We hope that you like our new catalogue cover in colour.  The only picture we have not mentioned is one taken by Rachel’s nephew (another teenager!) (from Holland) who spent about 6 months with us last year.  He sneaked a picture of two daft seed collectors that he came across in the middle of nowhere!

We wish you well for 2002 and let us hope that it is more peaceful and less stressful than the last year has been.

Best wishes

Rod and Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2001

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January 2001

Dear plant lovers,

For the South Western Cape, the winter of 2000 has been one of the driest on record.  In many areas rainfall simply did not materialise, and if it did fall, it was in minimal quantities.  The cold fronts sweeping in from the Atlantic, which are so much a feature of the Cape Mediterranean region, and which gave rise to the name “Cape of Storms,” have had little or no penetration beyond Cape Town and the interior of the country is fiercely dry.  This climatic pattern could not have come at a worse time, coinciding as it has with some of the most disastrous fires the Cape has ever experienced.  In many cases the response of the vegetation is depressing with no regeneration of many of the re-seeding plants.  There are now certain areas where Proteas no longer exist in the vegetation because of too frequent fires and lack of rain. Namaqualand had its third successive bad flower season this spring, and the good years are beginning to feel like dreams.  Hopefully they will come again.  We wonder whether these weather changes are due to global warming and are here to stay, or are they part of a normal dry – wet cycle?

This dry weather combined with fires has had a marked effect on our seed collecting as in many cases the seed was just not there.  Some plants flowered, but set no seed because of lack of moisture, or seeds formed, but then shriveled up.  Other plants didn’t even bother to grow, and remained safely underground without wasting precious reserves on growth.  And in other areas, there are simply no plants to collect seeds from – Ericas are a good example of this.  Many of our Erica seeds came from mountainous areas, and so many of these areas burnt either this year or last, that we have very few localities left for seed harvesting.

In contrast, the summer rainfall areas of the country look as though they will have good rain again this season.  This also has an effect on seed production – many of the trees put so on so much new growth in a good year that they seem to forget to flower and produce seeds, and often it seems to be a bit of stress that results in a good seed crop!  Seed collectors cannot win!

This reminds us of a plant, a new <i> Lachenalia </i> species in Southern Namibia that we saw about 10 years ago when we found it in flower.  We have been back to the area three times in search of it again, but have never been able to find any trace of the plant, due to the almost complete lack of rain in the area.  This part of Namibia is influenced by the weather patterns of the SW Cape, and when we don’t get rain in Cape Town, they certainly don’t get any in Southern Namibia!.  Perhaps one of these days our visit will coincide with a good rainy season and we will find it again.  For the moment, all that we have is a photograph of an intriguing plant!

During this year, a dream has come true for Andy (who owns half of, and runs Frontier, our tissue culture lab) and us – we have built a new lab on our smallholding outside Cape Town, and we will be moving the lab from its present premises at Stellenbosch over the next 3 months.  Built in the style of an old Cape farm house, the lab building is most attractive and looks very non-industrial!  Inside the building is plenty of glass, so the whole micropropagation process can be viewed from the office.  This is important as visitors are always fascinated by tissue culture and always want to look round.  Previously however, because of the danger of contamination in the lab, this was not possible – now we can oblige.

This year for the first time our smallholding had some income – we sold a fair number of Sandersonia aurantiaca tubers plus Clivia seedlings.  Three years ago we sowed 11kg of Sandersonia  seeds, and now the tubers are large enough to sell.  Those not sold are in full flower now in December, and what a magnificent sight they are.  Perhaps we should go into cut flower production in our spare time!  Apart from this income, the smallholding remains a hole into which we pour money, continuously!

Rod’s lecture tour to the USA, courtesy of the North American Rock Garden Society was successful and went off well.  We saw some beautiful scenery, met many interesting people including quite a few customers, and managed a bit of walking in the Rocky Mountains and in the mountains around Salt Lake City.  We enjoyed the visit tremendously, but found it tiring with all the hours spent in airports and on aeroplanes.  We spent all our time in the eastern USA, finishing in Chicago visiting Rachel’s brother.  We had not realised just how hot and humid this part of the USA is in summer, and we spent many hours drinking water!  Cape Town is hot in summer, but completely dry, and is easier to cope with.  This year we will probably not travel overseas, but will stay in Africa, where we would like to visit some of the better watered tropical highlands.  Who knows what seed will result from our travels!  However, this depends somewhat on the whims of the African politicians.  Zimbabwe is impossible to visit at the moment due to the lack of fuel in the country, and one never knows which country will be next.

A few work-related problems:

1) please when you order or correspond by e mail, make sure that your full name and address are on the e mail.  Often you may have been corresponding with Rod or Rachel, we then go away, and Frances has no idea who you are!

2) This year we have had a spate of people changing their orders at the last minute.  If you do this, it means that we have to re-write invoices, unpack orders and re-pack them.  I am afraid that in future we will have to charge a handling fee for changes.

Unfortunately we have lost one of our willing helpers – Rod’s mother passed away at the end of November at the age of 87.  Thankfully she died peacefully in bed at home after a short illness and we were able to keep her out of hospital, which she hated.  Our other employees (Frances, Darkie and Ondine, plus Rachel’s mother) are all still with us, as are our cats.

We both hope that you enjoy the 2001 catalogue and that you are able to find some interesting plants to try, and some space in your gardens to plant them!

Best wishes,

Rod and Rachel Saunders

From the Archives: Newsletter July 2000

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                July 2000

Dear Customer

Welcome to the July update of our year 2000 catalogue.  As usual, some old seed friends will have disappeared from the catalogue, & a few new ones have taken their places.

More than ever this year, rain has altered, influenced or disrupted our collecting plans.  For almost the entire country, 2000 will go down in history as “the year of the rain” – mostly too much, but in the SW Cape, far too little.  In the SW Cape, we have a Mediterranean climate with wet winters & hot reasonably dry summers.  This year most parts of the area had absolutely no rain during the very hot summer, for a period of about 9 months, the driest period for over 70 years.  This is the third successive year of below average rain for the area, & we are all beginning to feel desperate.  To make it worse, January 2000 started off with the most devastating fires ever seen in the Cape.  On one particular day there were 8 major fires burning at the same time in various mountain ranges.  At times it was almost impossible to move away from home as the roads were choked with smoke, & it really looked as though the end of the world had come!  Now we are longing for rain to start to repair some of the damage inflicted on the vegetation.

It is questionable whether fire or flood is worse – while the SW Cape was burning, the rest of the country was having some of the heaviest rain ever recorded, with some towns receiving up to 1.5 meters of rain in a month!  Abnormally heavy falls occurred over the entire sub-continent & the effect on Mozambique was devastating – you probably all saw pictures of the kilometers of water & destruction in that unfortunate country.  In the middle of all this, we decided to go on a field trip to the summer rainfall area to look for flowers.  Miraculously we timed our trip perfectly & it coincided with a two week window of drier weather, & although we had plenty of rain, the days were sunny (or at least not wet!) & the rain all fell while we were asleep or driving!  As you can imagine, the rain affects seed collecting in various ways.  Roads & bridges get washed away, so sometimes one cannot get to the site unless one walks.  Some seeds simply cannot be collected, for example Erica & other fine seeds stick to one’s hands & will not get into the collecting bags!  Also, Erica capsules swell in the rain & will not release their seed, so it is difficult to decide whether there is seed there or not.  Other seeds are just too difficult to dry in the confines of the car, so also have to be left behind.  In wet weather we normally drive with the car heater on & the dashboard draped with various bits of clothing & seeds in cloth bags, all soaking wet!  That is another thing to remember – paper bags disintegrate when wet, so we always carry a good supply of cloth bags in case of rain.  Rain & cooler weather also have an effect on the length of the seed ripening period, particularly in Iridaceae.  For example Romulea seed can take up to 10 weeks to ripen providing there is plenty of water & the weather remains cool, whereas under hot dry conditions, it can ripen in 4 weeks.  All in all, the weather makes planning one’s trips very difficult!

Another disruption this year was the political instability in countries to the north of South Africa.  Namibia is having problems with the Angolan war spilling across the border, and this has resulted in land mines in the north of Namibia.  And then, of course, the chaos in Zimbabwe has helped neither our travels, nor South Africa’s exchange rate!

People often ask us about our field trips & how we manage without all our “home comforts” for a month or more at a time.  Bathing is usually the first question, & yes, we do bath!  We take a shower (a converted bucket with a rose) with us, & each night we hang it in a tree & have a perfect shower in about 5 liters of warm water each.  We normally carry 60 liters of water in the car, & that is enough for 4 or more days.  While travelling, we sleep in a roof-mounted tent on top of our 4 wheel drive vehicle, away from the dust & dirt of ground level, & also away from any fellow creatures that occasionally feel the need to investigate us!  In the more built up areas we stay in regular campsites, but further out & off the beaten track, we just camp when the sun goes down where ever we happen to be.  We record “good campsites” on our map, & we will often base a day’s trip on the proximity of a good site.  When wood is available we cook over an open fire, otherwise on a camping stove.  We also frequently bake bread in a cast iron pot, & the same pot is occasionally used to bake scones!  On the whole we are very comfortable, except of course when it rains day after day, as it is impossible to keep us, our clothes & our bedding dry.

Some of you will know that we have had many problems with the postal & courier systems this year.  Many of you received two copies of the January catalogue – this was due to the courier having “lost” the first batch of catalogues (all 78kg of them!), us re-printing the catalogue & re-sending them, & then the courier finding the first batch again!  Several parcels have got lost in the post, some have taken months to arrive, & some have been returned to us with incorrect addresses.  We are sorry about these problems, & are trying to sort them out.  None of the postal systems are ideal, & it is a matter of finding the best one that loses the least parcels!  When you send your orders, by e mail, fax or letter, please make sure that your name & address are both clearly written so that we are less likely to make a mistake.  That at least eliminates one of the potential problems.

We hope that you enjoy the July catalogue, and that your seed sowing results in lots of new plants.

From the Archives: Newsletter January 2000

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January 2000

Dear plant lover,

The last year in the South Western Cape has been unusually dry (again!).  Last summer we thought that just about every mountain range in the Western Cape had burned – at one stage there were 7 major fires within sight of Cape Town.  These summer fires, followed by one of the driest winters we have experienced, have been disastrous for the flora, and on many of the fire sites there has been little or no regeneration of fynbos plants, and the big displays of annuals and bulbs that normally follow fires did not materialise.  As a result of an early fire (ie. only 7 years since the last fire) in the Stellenbosch mountains, Protea grandiceps may now be extinct in that area, as the plants had only just flowered for the first time.  This summer has also started off badly with 3 large fires already, one of them in an area that last burned only a few years ago.

On a visit to Namaqualand in July, it was most depressing and it looked as though it was mid-summer – not a speck of green and no annuals anywhere.  We wrote the area off and thought “no flowers this year”.  On the bright side, the Cape Peninsula and some parts of the West Coast produced some of the most dazzling spring displays of annuals that we have ever seen – vast sheets of Nemesias, Arctotis, white Dimorphothecas , blue Felicias , all dotted with masses of purple and pink and blue Babianas.

And then suddenly Namaqualand had 2 good falls of rain in August and September, and over night parts of the area blossomed!  The Kamiesberg was a blaze of colour with annuals, Pelargoniums and bulbous plants, but a month later than usual.  Not a tourist in sight – they had all given up and gone home disappointed!  Such is the fickleness of nature!

This year we spent a large amount of time out and about seed collecting, and we did our customary 70 000km driving distance!  While seed collecting, we often feel like ants, or hunter food gatherers, collecting up the harvest and trundling home with our bags of seeds.  Quite frequently we are helped in our seed harvesting by the actions of various animals.  This year we collected a large amount of Diospyros mespilliformis seed, something we normally struggle to get due to the large size of the trees.  This time it was easy – bats had been busy in the tree eating the flesh off the fruits and discarding the seeds which lay in heaps on the ground underneath.  A few days later we found great piles of Maroela seeds (Sclerocarya birrea), beautifully cleaned for us by a combination of monkeys in the trees above, and goats on the ground.  And we never collect Cussonia seeds unless we see birds, usually starlings or barbets eating the fruits – they are very fussy and only eat the fruits when they are ripe!

Our smallholding is progressing, and in the next two weeks we will be erecting yet another large shade area.  As bulbs grow they need more and more space – something that one does not think about when one starts off with a little handful of seeds!  And of course, as more and more shade cloth goes up, so we need more and more watering systems – something else one doesn’t think about.  With all the fires in the Cape we have managed to collect a good range of showy annuals.  Last autumn we sowed seeds of about 20 species and we were encouraged by their success.  Some were good, some were wonderful, and some were unsuccessful and were discarded quickly!  This year we will be sowing a further 60 to 70 species, and we look forward to seeing them flower “in captivity”.  The idea is not only to find new annuals with potential, but also to start bulking up the seed for future sale.  One of our more successful annuals is a white <i>Dimorphotheca</i> that we call “Silverhill White”.  We started off with a handful of seeds several years ago, and this year we sold about 400kg, grown for us by two seed producers.  We have discovered how important it is to spread the risk of seed production – one of our growers in the Little Karoo started off this last autumn with 8kg of seed, and landed up with 1kg at the end of the season!  This was due to a complete lack of rain and unseasonal hot weather in mid-winter.  It was our success with this daisy that encouraged us to try some other annuals.

Frontier laboratory is doing well, and we have now reached the point where we can consider building our own premises, rather than renting an old converted farm house.  Plans for a new lab are being drawn up, and hopefully we will begin to build in the new year.  The lab will be built on our smallholding, so we will not be leaving the winelands of Stellenbosch.  Our smallholding is a sub-division of the Hazendal Wine Estate, which has just won the “wine-maker of the year” award in South Africa.

In the middle of next year we will once again be visiting America, this time at the request of the North American Rock Garden Society.  Rod will be giving a series of lectures at various towns mostly in the Eastern USA, ending up in the Rocky Mountains.  A good way to plan a trip!

Frances, Ondine and Darkie are still all with us.  Darkie now lives in a new larger house and had a frustrating year finding out about the joys of building and selling houses!  Ondine’s son is almost a year old and will be walking any day.  Frances now has a teenage daughter, and we all know what that means!

Finally, last but not least, our cats now number 4.  During this last winter while collecting seeds in the rain along the West Coast, we heard a tentative miaow from under a bush, miles from anywhere.  With a bit of encouragement from Rod, a little bedraggled orange kitten emerged and rubbed round our ankles.  Well, what could one do, so we now have one of the most confident, beautiful and active ginger cats that we have ever seen.  He has been aptly named Zingiber, and he now plagues the living daylights out of our older, and more sedate Patrick, Charlotte and Velcro!

Happy seed sowing and we hope that you all have a peaceful, happy and prosperous new year.

Rachel and Rod Saunders