Harry Bolus

1834 – 1911

Harry Bolus was born at Nottingham on the 28th of April, 1834, and went out to the Cape, as a poor apprentice, when he was just sixteen years old. He began the study of botany in 1864, on the death of his first child. This hobby he pursued wholeheartedly, making excursions up the mountains in search of plants, which he described carefully with pencil and pen.

He corresponded with Sir Joseph Hooker, and sent a large number of succulents and bulbs alive to Kew Garden in London. South African botanists, among whom were Professor MacOwen and Guthrie, became his friends.

For fifteen years Harry Bolus lived at Graaf Reinet, in the centre of the Cape Colony. His career there was varied indeed. First a boy with a few shillings in his pocket, then a volunteer in a local war, later an insurance secretary, and later still a sheep-farmer. In 1874 he joined his brother in Cape Town as a broker. He retired twenty years later with a considerable fortune.

The heaths and orchids of the Cape specially attracted Harry Bolus after his retirement from business. As a result, he published The Orchids of the Cape Peninsula in 1888, and his two-volume Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanarfum, Extra Tropicarum, comprising two hundred and descriptions of living plants found in South Africa, followed between 1892 and 1911. Two years after his death a third volume of a hundred plates was issued. With the help of his friend Dr. Guthrie, he monographed the genus Erica for the Flora Capensis. In 1903 he issued, in collaboration with Major A.H. Wolley-Dod, a List of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Cape Peninsula.

Bolus visited Kew Garden in 1876, bringing a large collection of plants for comparison with those in the Kew Herbarium. He left duplicates behind, and on the return journey he had the misfortune to lose all his specimens, as well as much information gained on the visit, through the wreck of his ship the Windsor Castle, in Table Bay.

His enterprise was such that many fine books, some now unprocurable, became his. These included complete sets of the Botanical Magazine, Botanical Register, Refugium Botanicum, and the large folios of Redout‚ Jacquim, Bauer and Masson. He founded the Harry Bolus Professorship of the Cape University and bequeathed 48.000 Pounds for scholarships, besides leaving his rich herbarium and library to the South African College. The University conferred on him the honorary degree of D.Sc. In recognition of his scientific work and of his liberality endowing the Professorship. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1873, and he was one of the original Members of the South African Philosophical Society.

This man of the strenuous, adventurous nature was withal quit and unassuming. Professor Pearson tells of the answer Bolus made, when giving evidence before a parliamentary commission, and he was asked – You are a botanist? – His answer was -I do not call myself a botanist, but I have studied botany in my leisure hours -. Harry Bolus died at Oxford, Surrey, on the 25th of May, 1911. His name is commemorated in the genera Bolusia, Bolusafra, Neobolusia, Bolusanthus and Bolusiella.

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Carl von Linné

1707 – 1778

Carl von Linne‚ (or Linné; Carolus Linneaus in Latin) was born on 23 May 1707 in Sweden. He died at the age of 71, on 10 January 1778. He was the natural scientist, who developed the basis for today’s taxonomy.

His family had already planned young Linné’s future: A life in the service of the church, just like his father and his grandfather on his mother’s side. However, he showed very little interest in this career, his interests lay in botany. This impressed the local doctor and so Carl was sent to study at the university of Uppsala.

During this time, Carl von Linne became convinced that the pistils and stamen of the flower were the basis for classification of plants. He wrote a small dissertation, which earned him the position of extraordinary professor. In 1732, the Academy of Science in Uppsala financed an expedition to Lappland, which before then was almost completely unknown. The result of this expedition was a book published in 1737 on plant life in Lapland, Flora Laponica.

After that, Von Linne moved to the mainland. During his stay in Holland, he met Jan Frederic Gronovius and showed him a draft of his work on taxonomy, the Systema Naturae. In this draft, he had replaced the compilation definitions, such as physalis emno ramosissme ramis angulosis glabis foliis dentoserrtis with systematic double- barrel names that are still in use today, e.g. Physalis angulata. That first name is the name of the species, the second name of the variety. Higher groups were created in a simple and orderly manner.

In naming, Linne trusted in common sense. In this way, he named the human being, Homo sapiens, the knowing human being. He also described a second human species, Homo tryglodytes, respectively Homo nocturnus, caveman, by which he probably meant the previously described chimpanzee. Mammals were named after the mammary gland, Mammelia, as he wished to encourage women to breast-feed their children.

In 1739, Carl von Linne‚ married Sahra Morea, the daughter of a doctor. Two years later, he was given the chair of medicine at Uppsala, which he, however, soon changed for the chair of botany. He continued with his classifications and extended it to animals as well as minerals. Even though this method of classifying of minerals sounds strange to us today, 100 years before Darwin’s theory of evolution, it was an easy way to catagorize the whole of nature.

1775 Carl von Linne‚ was knighted for his services. His botanical garden can still be visited today in Uppsala.

As Linnaeus was born in May 1707, the ever great National Geographic published an article on him and his taxonomy:
National Geographic – Carl von Linne

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Robert Jameson

1832 – 1908

Robert Jameson was born in Scotland in 1832 at Kilmarnok. As a youth, he had to accompany his father’s regiment. He stayed for 8 years in Gibraltar and after that for 4 years in Canada. His parents had chosen a military career for him. However, he changed his mind and eventually he landed in Durban in 1856. A few years later he started his own company, manufacturing condiments, preserves etc. which employed a large amount of labour, turning out goods which were known throughout South Africa and which were even exported to Canada and Australia. Jameson’s Jam, the business was started in his private house.
In 1868, he first evinced interest in arboriculture. As a Councillor, he suggested tree planting in the streets of Durban. In addition, several parks even up until today bear testimony to his forethought and contributions. In 1877, first watering-carts were put on main streets at his suggestion, and in 1880, he was nominated for mayor, but, as he resided outside of Borough, he was ruled ineligible. As the Chairman of the sanitary Committee for more than 20 years, Robert Jameson worked most strenuously for the improvement of conditions in Durban. He has been associated with the Town Council for over 30 years, mainly as a Councillor, and as a Mayor from 1895 to 1897. Since 1895, he also served a representative from Durban Co. on the Legislative Council. For period of 10 years, he served as an officer in the Durban Mounted Rifles and was awarded a Zulu War Medal.
 

First plant sent to Kew by John Medley Woodscollected by Robert Jameson

1867, he became a member of the Natal Botanical Garden Committee and contributed packets of seeds to the garden from time to time.

When news of the rich gold strike at Moodies near Barberton reached Durban in 1884, Jameson and a Mr Penningsfield formed the Moodies Gold Mining and Exploration Company and trekked to the new goldfields. Robert Jameson evidently returned to Durban shortly afterwards, taking with him plants of a Gerberas, which grew in profusion near the diggings, as a contribution to the Botanical Garden. John Medley Wood, curator of the Garden since 1882, sent plants to Kew in 1888 and one survived to be figured in Bot.Mag.t.7087, 1 November 1889. Harry Bolus had collected the same species during a visit to Barberton in October 1886 and suggested to J.T Hooker that it should be called Gerbera jamesonii.

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