DANIEL SAVED FROM THE LIONS' DEN - THE CURIOUS CASE OF CONOPHYTUM DANIELII AND JARMILAE

摘要

At the time of the Millennium, it appeared that there were two possible names that could be applied to a newly-discovered purple-flowered conophytum from the Platbakkies area, namely Conophytum danielii Pavelka and C.jarmilae JJ.Halda. In "Dumpling and His Wife" (Steven Hammer et al; EAE Creative Colour Ltd, Norwich; 2002, pages 298-299), I reviewed these two names and recommended that C.jarmilae should be the name applied to this taxon because it had been published at an earlier date. I pointed outthat Joseph Halda's descriptions of C.jarmilae in both Latin and English were extremely short, such that it was not possible with certainty to assign a known wild cono population to the description. Furthermore, there were no accompanying illustrations and the cited locality of "Daakus Farm" does not seem to exist. However, the circumstantial evidence indicated that the name could be equated with one of the two taxa published slightly later by Peter Pavelka: C.hanae and C.danielii (Fig 22.5). In retrospect, I think that I was too influenced by the circumstantial evidence and this is confirmed by recent developments.