2017 08 28 Jacobs Path
Babiana ambigua (Common Bobbejaantjie)
13. Fan Aloe, Aloe plicatilis
In the early years this area was called the Aloe Koppie, but most aloes failed to thrive here and were moved to the Mathews Rockery in the 1920s-30s. Only the Fan Aloe and the Krantz Aloe, Aloe arborescens, remain. Two Fan Aloes were introduced in 1913, one by Neville Pillans and one by Edwin Percy Phillips. This Fan Aloe is one of those 1913 plants, but at some time it lost its identifying number, so we don’t know which one it is.
236/84 re-accessioned number, is one of the following accessions:
418/13 Neville Stuart Pillans (1884-1964) ex hort OR
1010/13 Edwin Percy Phillips (1884-1967) French Hoek
Probably a survivor from the 1915 planting.
ALSO The first plant introduced to Kirstenbosch on 2 August 1913 was an Aloe arborescens, and there were three more accessions in 1913. Some of these original 1913 aloes are still in the garden but they have lost their original acc numbers so we don’t know which collections have survived or which are which. These lost accession survivors have been relatively recently renamed after the curators and directors – see big old specimen on the Koppie behind the sun shelter named after the second director, Robert Harold Compton (1886-1979). (re-accessioned ‘Compton’ 666/83) and is possibly a survivor from Aloe Koppie days
Edwin Percy Phillips (1884-1967) SA botanist and taxonomist studied at SA College in CT under Pearson, curator of National Herbarium, author of The Genera of South African Flowering Plants published 1926
for Pillans info see Ginkgo http://www.ispot.org.za/node/195530
A friend's friend initiated a hike this weekend, aimed at locating a healthy population of Disas in Jonkershoek Nature Reserve. My friend agreed that I post her photos with the condition that I do not make the location known, as they do not want the locality to become a 'shopping mall'. (It helps that I honestly do not know where they went.) She told me that the population consisted of ~100 individuals, and that there were many buds that will probably open within the next week or two. Check out the tiny red spots in the 'stream' photo. This is a description of their typical habitat. What a discovery!!!