346 



THE GLIDE TO NATURE 



Some Characteristic South African 

 Plants. 



BY CHARLKS J. CHAMBERLAIN, CHICAGO, 

 ILLINOIS. 



In January. 1912, I arrived in South 

 Africa for a field stud}' of the African 

 cvcads, a family in which I had been 

 interested for many years. Besides the 



fig. 1. 



ALOE FEROX, NEAR OUEENSTOWX. 

 SOUTH AFRICA. 



cycads, there are other South African 

 plants which are equally characteristic, 

 and to the public, more interesting. 



Although some familiarity with the 

 Mexican tropics had taken away the 

 novelty of seeing greenhouse species 

 and carefully cultivated out-of-door 

 exotics growing luxuriantly by the 

 roadside, the South African forms are 

 so beautiful and so different that the 

 novelty was renewed. 



Gladiolus is common and various 

 Liliaceae and allied families are con- 

 spicuous on the velt, and in the rough 

 and rocky places many species of Pel- 

 argonium (Geranium), so popular in 

 cultivation, are abundant. On the velt 

 and 011 the mountains, Ericaceae 



(Heaths) add much to the beauty of 

 the scenery. Our own members of this 

 family, like blueberries and huckleber- 

 ries, have beautiful flowers, but the 

 South African species flower even more 

 profusely and the plants are so abun- 

 dant that large patches on the moun- 

 tain side will be blue, or purple, or pink, 

 or bright scarlet. Doubtless. South 

 Africa has many more flowers to con- 

 tribute to our gardens and conserva- 

 tories. 



One of the most striking and charac- 

 teristic plants of the region between 

 Znluland and Cape Town is the Aloe. 

 There are various species. One of 

 them. Aloe Bainesii, has become quite 

 popular in cultivation in South Afri- 

 can gardens and on private lawns, fts 

 popularity may be due to the fact that 

 it is not only a graceful tree, with very 

 symmetrical branching, but it grows rap- 

 idly from seed. A plant at Grahams- 

 town twenty-five years old. is twenty- 

 five feet high and has a trunk four 

 feet in diameter. The most striking 

 species of the genus is Aloe fcrox, 

 which is at its best on dry mountain 

 sides, but is abundant in arid places 

 everywhere (Fig. 1.) It looks like a 

 medium sided Mexican agave, except 

 that it has a trunk that may reach a 

 height of ten feet. It is well named, 

 for the rigid leaves, with a stout spine 

 at the end and saw-like margins, give 

 it a fierce aspect. Even a soldier's 

 khaki suit must be orotected from con- 

 tact with these forbidding leaves. 

 Many small herbaceous plants are 

 sniny, and many shrubs and trees are 

 thorny. I wondered how the Zulus 

 and Hottentots, who carried my lug- 

 pns"e. could go through such places 

 bare-foot, but they never seemed in- 

 convenienced. I was told that when 



