Eighty Years of Graham Williamson: An Appreciation
To celebrate his 80th birthday, we join with two of Graham's friends to recognize his contributions to science and our hobby. I have travelled with Graham and Françoise on a couple of occasions, including my first trip to Namibia on the CSSA ‘Detour’ in 2002. Figures 1–4 have captured him in his natural habitat. Graham is an inspiring educator, and is in no small way responsible for my subsequent passion for seeing plants in habitat, and for that I am sincerely grateful. I know all who appreciate the plants he shows us though his many presentations and publications will wish him well now and in the future – Editor
First Impressions
It was after a talk at Succulenta 95, near Johannesburg, when I first met Graham. Many hours of flying and a tedious talk had been too much. Wakened by applause, I apologized to the people sitting next to me. They smiled, saying I had made the right choice. They were the Williamsons.
After the conference, a trip with them through Namibia and the Richtersveld confirmed that wry humor was a characteristic of Graham. Tiresome questions posed by garrulous ladies received patient, if oblique replies. It was delightful, providing a respite from the rigors of desert heat, chill ocean winds and spartan habitations in places. He was the master guide, knowing every nook, cranny and crag of the long and tortuous route, providing names for every species encountered. He described the geology of each formation and the local weather features, particularly if it was important for the species growing there. Plants, mostly succulent ones, were only part of the repertoire. Vertebrate and non-vertebrate species, insects and mosses, all sections of the orchestra were included. For rondos, historical touches were added, the discovery of Rosh Pinah, the stories of diamond stealing attempts in the Sperrgebiet of southwestern Namibia and how vehicles that entered the forbidden land could never leave, the reason for the onomatopoeic name, Knersvlakte, given to the home of the Argyroderma. To anyone with years spent in the arid remoteness of Oranjemund where year-round winds drive moisture onshore to sustain unique, succulent forms of life, this work could have been irksome. On a tour, importuned with queries that had already been answered, a guide might seek solace in some unexpected way. Once, I expected a denouement along the lines of “Night of the Iguana”. Happily, his patience never faltered.
Getting Acquainted
A few years later the Williamsons attended the 1998 CSSA meeting in San Diego. Graham expressed surprise at seeing Senecio haworthii and euphorbias from the Richtersveld growing in my garden. We agreed that to visit habitats was as important as to see plants, thereby planning a trip. Arriving in Capetown after another exhausting journey, it was clear from the outset that there would be no time to recuperate. A whirlwind visit on the way back from the airport to see changes at Kirstenbosch, a lunch with Bruce Bayer and his wife and five minutes to view his Aloe pillansii completed the Capetown segment; it was time to load the truck. There was no time to waste, for rain had just fallen in the Richtersveld. Graham, the enthusiastic naturalist, was ready for a campaign. Some sketches from that campaign illustrate how Graham and Françoise have continued for many years, to seek, to study and to and monitor the biota of the area.
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Graham communing with a old friend, Pachypodium namaquanum, in the Richtersveld, 2003. Photo by Tim Harvey.
Although Graham had prepared a scheduled route he was willing to deviate from it on the first day because of my desires to see some bulbs in the Cederberg range. This led us to some surprise findings and let him seek a Bulbine that was on his to do list. In arid areas such as the Richtersveld, flexibility with a plan is often needed. One kop-pie may receive rain while others nearby remain dry. Thus did we proceed.
Evening sessions around a fire at Umdaus provided insights into his methods as well as many stories about other plantsmen. Perhaps it was the remoteness the place, the absence of sounds, of wind, of animals, even rodents, that focused our attention, reducing the hyperbole that often accompanies enthusiasm. He grew up in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and, even at an early age, had developed a keen interest in plants. He wished to study botany but, for practical reasons, studied dentistry. In his twenties he became an international rugby player, representing his country at wing three-quarter. In 1978, he authored the first book written on ‘The Orchids of South-Central Africa’, the title conveying the nature of its contents. After political changes in Zimbabwe Graham became a stateless person. The South African Republic rejected his initial application and, when he applied in London and Dublin for British or Irish citizenship, he was also rejected because, in both cases, his grandparents had died too many years earlier. He moved to Oranjemund, Namibia where he worked as Senior Dental Officer for Anglo-American mining. During that period Graham and Françoise traveled all over the Richtersveld and southern Namibia, including the Sperrgebiet. Many of the trips were of short duration, sometimes at weekends. He said that it was not unlike the practice of Rev. Louis G. Meyer (of Cheiridopsis fame) who, after his Sunday sermon, would head out into the Richtersveld to resume his secular studies. While the Richtersveld offered boundless opportunities to find new species, accidents there could be deadly, whether from insect bites, getting stuck in sand, being forced to halt in sandstorms or running short of water. Once they almost died of thirst in midsummer heat; they found muddy, brackish water that made them ill but saved their lives. Despite such perils they have survived for many years in contact with the harsh environment while maintaining their cheerful spirits and enthusiasm for life.
Matters of Conservation
During those frank campfire exchanges, Graham would describe how he had come across new plants and shared that information with others. The one case about which he expressed real regret in publicizing results occurred in the early days of GPS usage, when he released the coordinates of certain rare plants in the Richtersveld to the authorities and thence to the public. Some of the sites were later damaged and plants were removed, some sites losing all specimens. Conservation of plants, and of all life forms, was most important to him. He would frequently tell how and where damage had been caused to the environment, whether by large corporations involved in mining, by individuals extending their collections or by local farmers. He recounted multiple events to illustrate this, but during our travels, two lesser ones were worthy of note.
One day, while traveling along a dirt road in Namaqualand, we were forced to slow to a stop to get past a large pile of succulent plants directly in our way, specimens of Tylecodon wallichii (Fig. 5). Tylecodons are very toxic to grazing livestock and, in this case, a farmer had presumably torn out the plants and left them in the road where his animals could not reach them. At a nursery in the US each plant would have been valuable. I encouraged him to bring some back, but he replied solemnly, “I carry a license to collect a limited set of plants on this trip, bulbines among them, but no tylecodons. If we get stopped between here and Capetown with these plants I will lose that license, and will have great difficulty in getting another. If you pick up these plants and place them in the truck without me seeing you do it, the same rules will apply.” We drove on without them. He disagreed with some of the regulations and the inconsistent application by the authorities, but was not going to disobey them.
Another day, in the eastern Richtersveld where the aloes are tall and appear as intermediates between A. pillansii and A. dichotoma, we saw some seed pods on high. He told how serious botanists had come with him to such places. Without any means for cleanly collecting seed pods, they threw rocks at thirty foot specimens in the hope of knocking some down. He was concerned by the lack of seedlings of the endangered species A. pillansii, due to both long drought and marauding goats, but was riled by the thoughtless, even childish behavior of people who understood the damage they were causing. At six, I had used the technique to bring down ‘conkers’ from chestnut trees.
These are but two cases of that tried his patience. To describe more would leave the false impression that all he wanted to do during his long career was to blow whistles. Far from it, he had high commendation about many who had sought his help in discovering life of all forms in the area. David Attenborough was one of them.
Searching
A day on trek with Graham and Françoise usually began at a very leisurely pace. Except in special circumstances there was nothing to be gained by rising early. Flowers of the mesembs and some other families do not open until the day is both warm and bright, often not before early afternoon. It was on one of those exceptional days, one for euphorbias, that we started early. Their flowers do not expect the sun to coax them open each morning. We reached E. pentops soon after sunrise, when the purple coloration in some specimens became strong, thus providing the reason for our early arrival. At different sites that day we found another six species, all of them in bloom. Without any maps, and recalling locations by changes in features such as absence of the quartz hillocks that so frequently indicate the presence of mesembs and crassulas, Graham displayed his navigational skills across unmarked terrain. He understood where there might be hidden, unreported specimens.
While discussing the species diversity we had just seen at Umdaus, he remarked, while pointing to the varied landscape all around that there were more species yet to be found on the koppies of the Richtersveld area. He and Françoise had climbed many of them. Some were uninteresting while others had the potential to hold inselberg endemics, including tylecodons.
His detective instinct was assisted by tenacity. We visited Bulletrap, where there were fields of yellow Grielum and blue Felicia spp., succulent crassulas and mesembs and bulbous ornithogalums in bloom. It was a floral paradise, but where was that group of Othonna euphorbioides? Hours of searching, moving from site to site, yielded nothing. He decided that somebody must have cleared the plants and that we should make one more effort higher up a hill before the sun went down. On a scree-covered outcrop facing west we found an astounding sight, not of the Othonna, but of dozens of Monilaria obconica in both deep pink and pure white forms, side by side. It was a sight to remember (Fig. 6). Tenacity had supplanted memory. The following year Graham returned to the proper site for the Othonna and found the group without difficulty. There had likely been too much floral activity during our visit to distinguish it from the crowded background.
Recording and Telling
In addition to showing great care with his specimens, Graham produced first-rate drawings of them, as his little handbook of plants, animals and insects of the Richtersveld shows. In the pre-digital era, when one had to count the number of reels brought on a trip and take hand-held shots with Kodak 64 film, Graham produced shake-free images using exposure times of one sixtieth of a second and longer, no simple feat in a berg wind. He demonstrated the home-made reflectors that he brought on his trips and how he used them to lessen the contrast between a sunlit object and its shadow. In addition to the plant subjects, he turned his lens on the lizards, insects, birds, animals and invertebrates. Who else would care to notice that it was a Dorcaisea snail that was chewing a Cheiridopsis pillansii?
While he retained close contact with the botanical world and was a research associate with the Bolus Herbarium he was never happier than out in the field. He was knowledgeable about the Nama people and their customs, and was a friend with many. One, a park ranger, made the first sighting of Amaryllis paradisicola and reported it to him. Most of his photographic work involved the individuals of local biota, but he took much pleasure in composing views of the landscapes and the geological formations. No subject was ignored, the signature of a complete naturalist. All features of the area, living or not, were subjects for his camera and records. While visiting a vernal pool with sundews and Romulea spp. in bloom, he drew my attention to the color scheme of a yellow and green slug that was devouring a purple Babiana. His eye for detail included records of the past, from gravestones to petroglyphs. Examples of the extensive repertoire appear in his chef d'oeuvre, ‘Richtersveld, an Enchanted Wilderness’.
That trait also shows up, if less emphatically, in his earlier book on orchids. The environments are described and the reader is led through each of the genera with descriptions that are replete with his own pen and ink drawings and photography. This was the first book written on orchids in southern and central Africa, a notable achievement in days when some of the genera and species, let alone their provenances, were not well known.
When chilly South Atlantic winds blew strong it was sure that another lesson on the climate of the area would begin. From the icy Benguela current, the desert climate, the sand-blasted euphorbias to the source of the giant sand dunes of the Sperrgebiet and the pockets of high humidity and special plant populations on the Orange River, the lessons were numerous. There would be classes on geography, climatology, geology, ecology or biology, each time the wind blew, whether onshore or offshore. The formation of local mounds before each Euphorbia or Othonna and the hollow in the lee of the sand-laden wind, the part burial of Fenestraria and Dracophilus, all were contained in the notes of the class.
After Dark
After hiking and clambering, the activities would usually continue until low light caused long shadows. Then it was time to relax. So it was at Klipbok on a cool and windy day as we descended to level ground and to Cephalophyllum pillansii with bright-red eyes and lemon petals staring the sinking sun. Only then was the intensity of pursuit set aside. We had limited shelter from a strong wind, which made getting the fire going and food cooked a lengthy process. With the cool conditions, exertions all day and a late evening meal, my blood glucose level dropped to low levels, of which I was unaware until I heard Graham mutter that it would take two hours to get me to hospital. Prompted by this unusual concern, I realized my condition and asked for sugar. Restoration to normal senses came soon. It was his uncharacteristic behavior that provoked the response. Humor and laughter were normal after dark; anxiety was not. After dinner that evening it was time, not for conversation, but for song. With strong winds blowing in that remote place, who would care? Raucous renderings that only inebriated rugby players can summon were acceptable. Poor Françoise, she bore it all with lenient composure.
Achieving Objectives
The trip had been planned to find habitats, not just plants. It was not just a matter of Graham recalling where he had seen certain species years before. That would have been easier and have resulted in an interesting tour, but not an investigation. The plan had been to find succulent rock gardens and, on the way, to find Senecio haworthii and euphorbias. We found them. The Richtersveld abounds in such gardens, from habitats near the coast to sites on mountain-tops, from mist-dripping kloofs to quartz-clad mounds on desert plains, from places where conophytums carpet the ground to others where they are tucked tightly into steep crevices (Fig. 7). These are the living gems of the place and we inspected many. They are not what people generally talk about when describing the Richtersveld. Graham replaced his mental map of species locations with the senses of an alpine gardener. That placed S. haworthii on a mountain- top where, with Othonna arbuscula developed to stocky and bush-like form, it forms a colony, resplendent and basking in bright sun (Fig. 8).
Tomorrow to Fresh Woods
It was a succulent afternoon. We had inspected folded rock strata that were encrusted with opulent clusters of Conophytum bolusiae and its subspecies primavernum; we had marveled at massive specimens of both Enarganthe octonaria and a Phyllobolus sp. We had scrambled to view othonnas and Pelargonium echinatum and had barely avoided treading upon Lithops meyeri and Avonia albissima nestled densely among quartz chips. Even so, as darkness fell Graham and Françoise were still out searching. “We've seen lots of the yellow, but only one of the white”. They were referring to Cheiridopsis; several species were present. Their unrelenting search would continue (Fig. 9). It still does.
