African Violet - The Discovery

The African violet is, of course, not a violet at all even though it does come from Africa and its more usual deep purple blooms are of violet form and color. Actually it is a member of the Gesneria family to which belongs the velvet-leaved gloxinia. It was first discovered by Baron Walter von Saint Paul. His father, Hofmarschal Baron von Saint Paul of Fischbach in Silesia… president of the Dendrological Society of Germany, a group devoted to the study of trees, took particular interest in this botanical discovery.

Development

The publisher of Curtis Magazine, an old English publication which you can perhaps find in bound volumes among the horticultural books in your library, wrote:

“The Saintpanlia was discovered by my son, who lives in East Africa where he owns plantations of vanilla and India-rubber trees. It was found in two localities; one about an hour from Tanga, in wooded places, in the fissures of limestone rocks, as well as in rich soil with plenty of vegetable matter. This place is not more than fifty to one hundred and fifty feet above the sea level. The second place is in the primeval forest of Numbara, likewise in shady situations, but on granite rocks, two thousand five hundred feet above the sea. It is much more plentiful in the former place. Several varieties have been discovered that differ slightly in color of the flowers but all are blue.”

From seeds sent to England by Baron Walter, plants were raised by a Dr. Herman Wendland of Herrenhausen. When these flowered in 1893, he exhibited them in Ghent at the International Horticultural Exhibit and they “shared with Eulophiella exhibited by Messrs. Linden the honor of being the two most botanically interesting plants in the exhibition.” The next year nurserymen around the continent carried the seed and the Revue L’Horticulture Beige et Etrangere, beside a picture of a rather unrealistic and very blue saintpaulia with very pink petal reverses, remarked “And plants of this marvelous subject blooming in the time of year when flowers are rarest” were offered by L’Etablissement Ed. Pymcrt-Van Geert for six francs each.

Flowering plants were also developed in the Royal Gardens of England. The procedure was that prescribed for the gloxinia. A half century later we still grew saint paulia seeds the gloxinia way but the culture of the plant itself had many a green-thumb gardener puzzled. Perhaps because in its native state the African violet grows under such varying conditions as “rock fissures” and “rich soil,” and at such different altitudes, in civilization it also offers contradictions. This results in one enthusiast’s claiming success by methods quite opposite to those of other plants.