“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.” “Frequently.” “How often?” “Well, some hundreds of times.” “Then how many are there?” “How many! I don't know.”
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
The words, from Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, belong to Holmes and Watson, but if we substitute Williamson for Holmes, and most of us for Watson, we gain an insight into how Graham Williamson has discovered so much about so many organisms. In theory, the formula is simple: careful observation repeated as many times and in as many places as necessary. In practice, success requires equal parts of sweat, courage, and independence. It helps that Graham has had the sense to live on the right continent. Moreover, his work in Oranjemund, Namibia - as an exponent of the boldest profession, he tended human ivories - gave him repeated access to the rarely explored Sperrgebiet.
Readers familiar with Graham's early career will know of his pioneering observations amongst the Zambian orchids. Others will think of southern African euphorbias or of his studies of unilateral romance in Anacampseros. If I think rather of the mesembs he has found and studied, and especially of his plethoric Namaqualand bulbines, that is partly my own bias but also the number, oddness, and sheer beauty of the finds. In Bulbine alone he has described a score of species, the spectacular and inconspicuous alike (Table 1).
Table 1.
A list of succulent plants described by Graham Williamson. In addition Graham described over 35 taxa in the Orchidaceae.
Table 1.
Continued.
Crucially, Graham has facilitated the observations of others. His unusual kindness has blossomed many times and for many people. Do you need to know more about Conophytum taylorianum, which is protected by endless dunes and treaties? The wrinkliest C. angelicae, sharpei of the vegetable kingdom? Psammophora nissenii, the sticky-leaved mesemb which coats itself with sand and hides like an Iranian centrifuge? The reddest-blooded Lithops optica fma. rubra? The rosiest Monilaria? Well, I know just the person to ask.
I've yet to find a botanical or logistical problem which doesn't interest Graham. Recently I asked him about self-fertility in Bulbine fragilis G. Williamson. He gently reminded me that we'd both observed this phenomenon many years earlier, in Françoise Williamson's sunny kitchen. I too had seen the fruits turning plump and orange, like tiny hot peppers, but had forgotten the fact. Selfing is so unusual in Bulbine that it ought to have impressed me more fixedly. But in Graham's world every behavioral detail is interesting. Indeed, one could say that there are no details. Certainly there are no redundancies.
