PAGE 8
www. mountainecho.co.za
0824938700
The New Greenhouse and Crassulaceae
Finally our new Indigenous Plant Sales
greenhouse at the Giants Cup Café, 10km
along the Sani Pass road, is complete and in
service. This attractive addition to the Café
building was built by George Coles, and
allows us to display and store a wider range
of plants in conditions which allow for you,
the customer, to better view and choose what
you wish to purchase, and to allow for the
plants to thrive at the same time. We now
have a product list of 21 trees, 17 shrubs, 17
bulbs, 5 groundcovers, 2 creepers and 12
succulent species and varieties. In addition,
we have now put out plant name labels and
tree labels for over 100 specimens in our beds
and gardens, meaning you can see what
mature specimens look like.
Last month we looked at aloes – this month
we look at another succulent family, the
Crasulaceae. This is a large family, with the
GIANT’S CUP
CAFÉ & CRAFTS
family name “Crassula” coming from the
Latin word Crassus meaning thick, a
reference to their succulent leaves. Elsa
Pooley’s book list about 20 species found
in the Berg – we will look at two of them.
Crassula Sarcocaulis (umadinsane in Zulu)
is a bush-like succulent which likes rocky
areas from the little Berg right up to the
escarpment cliffs. It is tough and survives
the winter frosts, and so is a favourite food
of browsing buck such as duiker. However,
even if eaten well back, it returns to life
and growth in the spring, and seems none
the worse for the wear. It produces
bunches of attractive small white flowers
at the ends of the branches in mid-summer.
The leaves are small and needle-like. It
makes a good pot plant, but will also grow
well in the garden if not crowded out by
other plants.
Crassula Dependens is more of a creeping
succulent which thrives where there is little
competition, areas such as rocky shelves
in the little Berg. It looks quite similar to C.
Sarcolcaulis, but doesn’t grow big and
hence doesn’t form “branches”. It is also
evergreen, although it goes dormant over
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MARCH/APRIL 2015
winter. It takes off again in spring,
and also flowers with small
bunches of white flowers at the
ends of the stems. It also makes a
good pot plant, being tough and
hardy. It will do well as a ground
cover in your garden, especially if
you have bare and barren areas
where little else will grow.
Crassula Sarcocaulis and
Dependens and over 70 other
species of indigenous trees and
shrubs are available from
Indigenous Plant Sales at the
Giants Cup Café, 10km on the Sani
Pass road. Open daily 7.30am to
5pm. Enjoy a coffee and delicious scones with
homemade jam and fresh farm cream while you
read our information booklet and decide which
plants your garden needs. Local art works are
now also on display. You can also see what is
on offer on our new webpage at
www.sanilodge.co.za and click on the
“Indigenous Plants” link. We will be sending
out newsletter emails periodically about what
is new and available, so drop us an email at
[email protected] if you wish to join the
mailing list.
Underberg History: - Le Fleur and Sir Albert Hime
Lovingly stocked with quality, fairly
priced novel crafts & gifts for whole
family. Honey, cheese , trout, our own
organic homemade fare - rich icecream, yoghurt, farm milk, jams,
Simone’s chocolate almond treats, Fair
Trade coffee,chocolate & tea. We
support small crafters. Breakfast, light
lunches, cakes. Nature trail. Good cycle
stop off. Cows hand-milked at 3pm.
Open 7.30am - 5pm daily. SANI PASS
ROAD 0337020330
INDIGENOUS
PLANT SALES
:Choose from a range of tree and shrub
species. Information provided and
orders taken. Russell Suchet
0839873071
The Griqua had moved into East Griqualand
fairly early on in the 19 th Century and had
tried to settle down but they had no idea of
handling money as it had never been part
of their lives before and as a result they
squandered their resources. Many of them
became landless having sold their farms for
a pittance. There was a demand that the
Cape government that had taken over the
territory to restore some sort of order
should now provide these people with land
in terms of an earlier agreement they had
made. There was a sum of money that had
been allocated to the Griqua but never
distributed and the government used this
to buy up three farms and allocate them to
the more responsible families. The money
was insufficient to accommodate everyone
and Le Fleur one of the younger fire brands
and a perennial trouble maker began to
agitate against the government and
eventually to advocate actual revolt.. He
tried to involve the black communities and
get their support but they had endured the
various wars that had taken place until quite
recently along the border and wanted none
of it. Le Fleur was too young to have been
involved with the fighting that had taken
place in Griqualand West and that had led
to their having trekked to East Griqualand
so he had no real idea of what was involved
and could not involve enough people to
Visit
Himeville
5 Km from
Underberg
tract of land eminently suitable for both a
laager and a village. Originally surveyed as
a farm it had sufficient commonage to
support all the horses ad oxen that would
come with a village although later this fact
was challenged as being inadequate. The
building of the laager began in 1896 and was
completed by early 1899 at a cost of some
thirty thousand pounds we are told. No
troops were ever stationed there it being
purely for the protection of the residents and
the only time it was used for that purpose
was briefly in 1906 during the Bambata
rebellion but no fighting ever reached the
Underberg area. The village was laid out in
1898 and as a name had to be found for it
they called it Himeville after Sir Albert Hime
then the Minister of Public Works and who
was to become Prime Minister of the Colony
of Natal in 1900.
Sir Albert Hime was born in Dublin in
1842 and graduated from the Woolwich
Military Academy. He was very much in
favour of the English public school system
and he believed that the iniquities
perpetrated on the boys at these institutions
were necessary in order to produce men that
could defend the empire. He became an
engineer and was sent to Bermuda where he
built causeways and bridges some of which
are still in use today. On his return to
England he heard of a position in South
Africa and he applied being granted the
position of Colonial Engineer for Natal and
arrived in Pietermaritzburg which was
described as being the most clique ridden
place in the Empire. He was said to have
quickly settled in and as the Colonial
Engineer he was a man of importance and
much in demand. He had a wife and six sons
whom he sent to
Hilton College as he
felt it was the closest
thing to the English
public school and had
been modeled on
Rugby in England
and.which
was
described as being
Spartan. One of his
Himeville
sons was among those
61 Arbuckle Street
who arranged the
033 702-1019
purchase of the
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school from its
source it within 24 hours or less in case of emerfounder and helped
become a real threat to the government. When
trouble did flare up however it caused a panic
among many of the settlers who had recently
experienced the Zulu wars and were in a
constant state of wariness in case of further
conflict. Underberg was one of the foremost
areas if trouble were to take place
and the
majority of the settlers headed for Green End
where Grafton the ex policeman had had the
foresight to build a loop holed barn for just such
an eventuality. Nothing happened however and
one of the men rode down to Kokstad to see
what was happening and when he found that
the Cape Mounted Rifles had arrested Le Fleur
and his few followers and removed them from
the area he returned home and everyone went
back to their farms after only few days. Le
Fleur was taken to Port Alfred and detained
there so he was never again a threat to any
community and I believe there is a monument at
Port Alfred to him today.
The upshot however was that there was
a strong demand for protection by the
government and on their part the government
realised that there was a large tract of land about
which they had done very little and in fact knew
even less so they sent up a delegation of three
officers to look into matters and pick a site for a
village and a laager. The delegation consisted
of two officers from Pietermaritzburg , Col
Dartnell and Maj Bru de Wold and Capt. J L
Gordon a local resident of Bulwer for local
knowledge. The majority would have liked to
have the laager situated at Underberg where a
store and a few houses already existed but it
was on private land and the government never
buys anything and it was also under Hlogoma
the high hill which made it militarily unsuitable.
Three miles north they found a very suitable
should we not have stock we can
gency
(continued page 9)