Description
This is a “Heavyweight” title for your Botany, Natural History, and Africana collections. Published in 1971 (by the University of Natal Press), Streptocarpus: An African Plant Study by O.M. Hilliard and B.L. Burtt is the definitive scientific monograph on one of Africa’s most famous floral exports.
Streptocarpus contains some of the most fascinating of African plants. It is a genus of contrasts: the largest flower could hold the whole plant of the smallest species, yet the large flowermay be one of a hundred on a plant with only a single leaf, while the snall plant may have several leaves. Many species have been prized in cultivation since the first was sent to Kew by James Bowie some 150 years ago.
The lure of Streptocarpus has taken the authors from the forests of the eastern Cape to the high rolling plateau of the Nyika in northern Malawi. Their account is compounded of field knowledge and the extensive study of cultivated plants and herbarium specimens.
