Gideon Smith

Gideon Francois Smith was born in 1959 in Uitenhage, a small rural town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. This town is almost entirely enclosed by year-round greenery of the impenetrable thicket vegetation that is generally, albeit somewhat confusingly, referred to as Valley Bushveld. This early exposure that Gideon had to a vegetation type which is so exceptionally rich in a multitude of succulents of all shapes and sizes, clearly invaded his subconscious and still plays an important role in his life-long fascination with this group of plants. Gideon attended primary school in Uitenhage at Laerskool Handhaaf, and later secondary school at the Hoërskool Brandwag, from which he matriculated with academic honours and a distinction in his mother tongue, Afrikaans. At school he participated in various sporting activities, including rugby, tennis, and cricket; and served as a prefect, and as a member of the debating society, and on the editorial board of the school journal. At his parents’ home in Uitenhage, he established a series of rockeries for large-growing succulents and maintained a thriving collection of potted miniature succulents of all descriptions.

After having completed high school, he left the Eastern Cape, and enlisted for two years of compulsory military service in the South African Defence Force in Tembe, Bloemfontein, where he served in the Armoured Corps as an instructor on armoured vehicles and troop carriers. Following the period of conscription, he joined the Defence Force for a third year. The money that he saved during this year of military service enabled him to marry his high school sweetheart, El-marié. They met while they were both in their second last school year in Brandwag. During this year, her parents were transferred to Uitenhage, and Gideon immediately fell head-over-heels in love! They have now been together for 28 years.

After three years of having been a soldier in Bloemfontein, Gideon moved back to the Eastern Cape where he started his academic training at the University of Port Elizabeth, studying Botany and Chemistry as major subjects towards completing a B.Sc. degree. At 21, he was three years older than the typical first year student, and highly motivated and focussed academically. Most importantly, he wanted to find out first hand how to interpret the contents of The Aloes of South Africa, a copy of which he acquired some years before, as well as that of other standard works available at the time. By the time that the undergraduate students started doing project work, it was a foregone conclusion that he would work on the systematics of an alooid genus, the Eastern Cape endemic genus Chamaealoe. The third year project that he completed on the status of this monotypic genus has led to the publication of numerous papers in scientific journals. Although Gideon was awarded merit bursaries in all his undergraduate years, he completed his studies as an employee and bursary holder of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) and spent his university holidays doing vacation work for this company, either at the Port Elizabeth Branch, or at the head office in Pretoria. During the latter trips, which he undertook with El-marié, he regularly visited the National Herbarium, which was then still part of the Botanical Research Institute. He regards it as a privilege to have had the opportunity to meet the likes of Dr R. Allen Dyer, Messrs David Hardy and Larry Leach, Miss Mary Gunn, and Mrs Amelia Obermeyer Mauve, all of them at the time prominent botanists, succulent plant enthusiasts, or bibliophiles.

Following completion of his undergraduate studies he moved to Pretoria where he took up a position as pharmaceutical chemist with the SABS. However, since his first love was botany, he immediately registered for part-time studies at the University of Pretoria where he eventually completed a B.Sc. (Hons) degree specialising in systematics and ecology. He became the first recipient of the H.G.W.J. Schweikerdt medal for his B.Sc. (Hons) dissertation, and not surprisingly, the topic of the project was the status of some smaller alooid genera.

Shortly after having completed his B.Sc. (Hons) studies in Pretoria, he resigned from the SABS and took up a position as lecturer in the Department of Botany at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (PU for CHE). In the Department, which eventually changed its name first to Plant Sciences, and still later to Plant and Soil Sciences, he lectured in systematics and general botany to under- and postgraduate students, and became one of the first ever recipients of the prestigious award for Excellence in Tuition. During the seven years that he was attached to the PU for CHE, he carried on with research on Aloe and its generic relatives, regularly publishing the results in scientific and other journals. By the time that he was awarded Ph.D. by the University of Pretoria, where he studied under the supervision of Prof. A.E. (Braam) van Wyk, he had already published more than 100 papers, close on 30 of which were taken up in his dissertation. The years in Potchefstroom were hectic ones for Gidoen and El-marié. Their family grew by two with the births of their daughters, Janine in 1987 and Tanya in 1989.

Gideon eventually said farewell to university life and took up a position as Deputy Director: Research with the National Botanical Institute (NBI) (now SANBI) in Pretoria. In 1996, he accepted an appointment as Research Director of the NBI, where he still takes charge of the research programmes of the NBI. During the same year he was also appointed as Honorary Professor to the John P.H. Acocks Chair in the Botany Department at the University of Pretoria. Gideon is currently the Chief Director of Research and Scientific Services, still stationed at the Pretoria Branch of the NBI.

Gideon’s love of plants and botanical fieldwork has persisted over the years, even if he is now, as the NBI’s Chief Director of Research, more desk-bound than ever before. A few days per year are reserved for fieldwork and are jealously guarded as a means to retain his “sanity”. Needless to say, these few days are used to study South African succulents in their habitats.

He is also still, and will always be, an enthusiastic gardener and horticulturist. However, for his suburban garden he is not fond of large grass lawns; he rather treats his garden as a large, diverse, and to him, very special collection of plants amassed over a number of years. His plants are a constant source of pleasure and his garden remains a haven to which he can retire after a day at the office. Typically, when he moves house, a big concern is how to move a large collection of potted plants and cuttings, often of barely manageable dimension. Although he is committed to planting indigenous, he has separate beds for exotic collections. The flora of Mexico holds a special place in his heart and he is always on the look-out for locally available acquisitions from this rich treasure house of floristic diversity. From this region he probably has one of the most interesting collections of exotic century plants (Agave spp.). He is similarly fond of novel selections of our own flora, for example variegated, frost tolerant or monstrose (ugly, to some people) forms. His first love however remains the magnificently rich global succulent flora, and specifically those of South Africa. There are indeed very few succulent groups that he has not cultivated successfully. A number of the plants that he grows in Pretoria have been illustrated by the NBI’s resident artist, Gill Condy, and included in volumes of one of the house journals of the NBI, Flowering Plants of Africa.

Gideon obtained provincial colours for the Free State in tug o’war whilst he was resident in Bloemfontein in the early 1980s, and represented the province in the 560, 600, 640 and 680 kg divisions against a touring Swiss team and at various Springbok (national team) trials. Nowadays he is an active member of the Marathon and Road Running Club of the University of Pretoria in distances ranging from 10 to 50 km. He has completed well over 300 official road races organised under the auspices of Athletics South Africa. As is the case with his gardening activities, he nowadays finds very little time for adequate training, but as often as possible he will be found on the road where he spends time contemplating the important things in life. This he also does when he cycles to work on and old balloon-tyre bicycle fitted with a delivery basket and carrier for the books and files that are daily carted to and from his office. He refers to this activity as cross-training for his running career!

Gideon is also an accomplished chef and with assistance from his wife has done catering for groups of up to 45 people. He still does most of the cooking at home where he specialises in Mexican, Italian and South African culinary dishes.

For many years, Gideon has been collecting botanical books and plant paraphernalia. He has an extensive and valuable personal library (on which is wife claims he spends too much money) totalling many thousands of books and journals, particularly on succulents. Some of the books in his collection dates back to his school days when he purchased them as part of book prizes awarded for academic achievement. He also has large collections of succulent plant stamps, succulent society badges, cigarette cards, and much, much more.

Gideon has a special passion for music from decades gone by. The period from the late 40s to the 50s and 60s, which gave rise to what is now known as popular music, is a particular love of his. During this era rhythm and blues, hillbilly rock, country and western, gospel, folk, and rock and roll influenced one another to produce highly effective melodies. Examples of most of these sounds are contained in his large compact disk library.

Although his job as Chief Director of Research of the NBI keeps him more than busy, he has made time to be actively involved in research. He has authored or co-authored papers in the field of anatomy, palynology, phytogeograpy, conservation, taxonomy, floristics, cladistics, chemistry, reclamation ecology, science policy, reproductive biology, botanical history and bibliography, nomenclature, horticulture, and numerous others. Over the last few years he has also contributed as an author or editor to ten books. He has also co-written numerous book chapters and more than 100 scientific papers in refereed journals. The number of papers that have flowed from his pen now totals more than 250. He has also co-authored papers to various national and international projects, including Vascular Plant Genera of the World, Species Plantarum Succulentarum, Species Plantarum-Flora of the World, Contributions to the Flora of Southern Africa, Seed Plant Genera of Southern Africa, Southern African Plant Taxonomic Literature, Priorities in southern African plant systematics, and many more. Referring to his high publication output, Gordon Rowley who is now retired from Reading University in the UK, some years ago “honoured” Gideon with the following limerick:

“Cactusville”

There is a young fellow called Gideon
With energies at a meridian.
Like a Smith at his forge
He goes on to disgorge
Effusions on themes Alooidean!

(G.D. Rowley, 1 February 1991)

In addition, he has been invited to lecture locally and abroad on topics ranging from succulent plants systematics to research leadership.

Gideon is a member of almost thirty professional societies, and of many of these he is a life member, including the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT), Botanical Society of South Africa, the Succulent Society of Zimbabwe, and the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB). Gideon also serves on various committees in the arena of national, regional and international plant diversity. These include the General Committee of the IAPT, President of the International Organisation for Succulent Plant Study, the Council of the International Organisation for Plant Information, the SABONET Steering Committee, Chairman of the SABONET-South Africa National Working Group, and the Council of the South African Association of Botanists. He is also an editor of the South African Journal of Botany (with Proff. George Bredenkamp and Hannes van Staden) and serves on the editorial board of Aloe, journal of the Succulent Society of South Africa.

With his office based in South Africa’s National Herbarium (PRE), where the SABONET Coordinator’s Office is also situated, Gideon has been a continual source of inspiration and support to the SABONET Coordinator since the start of the Project in 1996. Since July 1996, they have together travelled extensively around southern Africa as part of their SABONET-supported survey of southern African herbaria. Gideon has been co-author of several SABONET Report Series, and has contributed numerous articles to SABONET News.

SABONET News 4.1: 3