Margaret Levyns and the Decline of Ecological Liberalism in the Southwest Cape, 1890–1975

Abstract

This article analyses the life and ideas of Margaret Rutherford Levyns (née Michell), a South African botanist who worked from 1918 to 1946 as a lecturer in botany at the University of Cape Town and continued to write about the Cape flora (known today as the Cape Floristic Region) until her death in 1975. Until the early 1960s, Levyns maintained a neutral scientific and moral understanding of invasive species, defined here as ‘ecological liberalism’, that reflected her gendered experiences as a botanist, her prevailing ideas of ecology, the lingering ideals of Cape liberalism, and her extensive research into the phytogeography and taxonomy of the Cape flora. Levyns began to shift her views on non-native invasive species only after retirement. By using Levyns as a lens onto the period, this article distinguishes between a prevailing Cape ecological liberalism from the 1890s to the 1950s that shifted towards a more critical stance on invasive alien species in the 1950s and 1960s.

Key words:

• floral nativism
• Margaret Levyns
• Cape Floristic Region
• invasive species
• ecology
• environmental history
• Cape liberalism
• gender
• University of Cape Town
• botany

Notes

1. See L. Sittert, The Nature of Power: Cape Environmental History, the History of Ideas, and Neoliberal Historiography’, Journal of African History, 45 (2004), 305–313, for a review of literature published before 2004. The quote comes from P. Steyn, ‘A Greener Past? An Assessment of South African Environmental Historiography’, New Contree, 46 (1999), 7–27, at p. 305; Recent works focused on the Cape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include (in order of publication date): S. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa 1820–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 182–185; W. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); S. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers: Notions of Indigenous and Alien Vegetation in South Africa’s Western Cape, c. 1902–1945’, Journal of Southern African Studies [JSAS], 36, 3 (2010): 559–618; J. Carruthers and L. Robin, ‘Taxonomic Imperialism in the Battles for Acacia: Identity and Science in South Africa and Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 65, 1 (2010), 48–64; J. Carruthers, ‘Trouble in the Garden: South African Botanical Politics ca. 1870–1950’, South African Journal of Botany, 77 (2011): 258–267; B.M. Bennett, ‘Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa: Climate, Exotics and Experimentation’, JSAS, 37, 2 (2011), 265–280.

2. For analysis of the current politics of indigenous plants in the Cape see, J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, ‘Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse and the Postcolonial State’, JSAS, 27, 3 (2001), 627–651; A. Neely, ‘“Blame it on the Weeds”: Politics, Poverty, and Ecology in the New South Africa’, JSAS, 36, 4 (2010), 869–887.

3. For this term see, L. Sittert, ‘Making the Cape Floral Kingdom: The Discovery and Defence of Indigenous Flora at the Cape ca. 1890–1939’, Landscape Research, 29, 1 (2003), 113.

4. For this term see, L. Sittert, ‘Making the Cape Floral Kingdom: The Discovery and Defence of Indigenous Flora at the Cape ca. 1890–1939’, Landscape Research, 29, 1 (2003), 113.

5. The early twentieth-century turn was part of the larger South Africanisation of science that sought to bring together Briton and Boer. See S. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge, 5–8; J. Foster, Washed in Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press), 64.

6. Sittert, ‘Making the Cape Floral Kingdom’, 113.

7. L. Sittert, ‘“The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze”: Noxious Weed Eradication in the Cape Colony, 1860–1909’, JSAS, 26, 4 (2000), 666.

8. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 617.

9. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 603.

10. The exception to this rule is L. Sittert, ‘Bringing in the Wild: The Commodification of Wild Animals in the Cape Colony/Province c. 1850–1950’, Journal of African History, 46 (2005), 270–271.

11. J.E.P. Levyns, ed., Insnar’d with Flow’rs: The Memoirs of a Great South African Botanist (Kirstenbosch: Botanical Society of South Africa, 1977), 151. For her original writings and the proof draft see University of Cape Town Manuscripts and Archives [UCT], Levyns Family Papers, BC632, B.3.4–3.5 To facilitate a greater ease of reference by scholars without access to Levyns's papers in Cape Town, I cite from Levyns posthumously published autobiographical writings rather than from her collections at the University of Cape Town Archives. Her writings were generally published as she drafted them, excepting for minor corrections for spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

12. The use of biographical analysis has seen a revival in the past decade, especially in the history of science and imperial history. See T. Porter, ‘Is the Life of the Scientist a Scientific Unit?’, Isis, 97, 4 (2006), 314–321; M. Terrall, ‘Biography as Cultural History of Science’, Isis, 97, 4 (2006), 306–314; N. Thomas, ‘Exploring the Boundaries of Biography: The Family and Friendship Networks of Lady Curzon, Vicerine of India 1898–1905’, Journal of Historical Geography, 30 (2004), 496–519; P. White, ‘Darwin's Emotions: The Scientific Self and the Sentiment of Objectivity’, Isis, 100, 4 (2009), 811–826.

13. I herewith cite Levyns's autobiographical writings only when referring to her quotes. All non-cited references to her life come from her writings.

14. This article uses the term ‘Cape liberalism’ broadly to describe the liberal political system, economy, and culture created by English-speakers in the Cape that granted at least a limited franchise to non-white voters from 1853 (the granting of self-governing status) to 1968 (the ending of coloured communal representation). Determining the exact dating of origins and end of Cape liberalism, or assessing whether the Cape liberal tradition was truly ‘liberal’, is not essential to understanding its cultural and intellectual effects on ecological and botanical thought during the period discussed. Rather, it is more important to emphasise that English-speaking liberals like Levyns imagined themselves to be more neutral than rural Afrikaans-speaking white republicans. For the orthodox interpretation of Cape liberalism that sees it as a separate historical trajectory compared with the histories of segregation in Natal, Transvaal, and Free State, see P. Lewsen, ‘The Cape Liberal Tradition-Myth or Reality’, The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th & 20th Centuries, 10 (1969–1970), 72–88; reprinted as ‘The Cape Liberal Tradition-Myth or Reality’, Race & Class, 13, 1 (1971), 65–80. For a revisionist account that situates the Cape within the broader course of South African history, see S. Trapido, ‘Liberalism in the Cape in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th & 20th Centuries, 17 (1972–1973), 53–66.

15. She also fought for the rights and increased pay of Coloured workers at UCT in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, she advocated for higher pay for A.R. Jacobs, a laboratory assistant, in 1937 and again in 1946. See UCT, Levyns Family Papers, BC 625, C5.1–C6.15, ‘M.R. Levyns to The Registrar’, University of Cape Town, 19 October 1937; ‘M.R. Levyns to the Registrar’, University of Cape Town, 26 March 1946.

16. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 1.

17. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 2–3.

18. For an analysis of the contradictions and tensions within ‘liberal’ Cape Town in the early twentieth century see, V. Bickford-Smith, ‘South African Urban History, Racial Segregation and the Unique Case of Cape Town?’ JSAS, 21, 1 (1995), 63–78.

19. Professor W. Ritchie, The History of the South African College 1829–1918 (Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller, 1918), 295.

20. See W.K. Durrill, ‘Shaping a Settler Elite: Students, Competition, and Leadership at South African College, 1829–1895’, Journal of African History, 41 (2000), 221–239.

21. Ritchie, The History of the South African College, 303–304.

22. M. Arnold, Women and Art in South Africa (New York: St Martins Press, 1996), 66–75.

23. Van Sittert, ‘Making of Cape Floral Kingdom’, 123.

24. Van Sittert, ‘Making of Cape Floral Kingdom’, 123.

25. Van Sittert, ‘Making of Cape Floral Kingdom’, 121.

26. Women had slowly gained privileges at Cambridge, including gaining admission to scientific labs in the mid-1870s and being allowed to sit for the Tripos and Honours in 1881. Cambridge dealt women a major blow when they rejected the appeal for women to be granted degrees after intense debate. See M. Richmond, ‘Women in the Early History of Genetics: William Bateson and the Newnham College Mendelians, 1900–1910’, Isis, 92, 1 (2001), 56–57.

27. M.R. Levyns, ‘Life in Peile Hall’, in A Newnham Anthology, edited by A. Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 95.

28. M.R. Levyns, ‘Life in Peile Hall’, in A Newnham Anthology, edited by A. Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 95.

29. M.R. Levyns, ‘Life in Peile Hall’, in A Newnham Anthology, edited by A. Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 96.

30. Richmond, ‘Women in the Early History of Genetics’, 85.

31. She decided to stay in Cape Town even after receiving a job offer to work as a senior lecturer at Witwatersrand University in 1917 from the university's incoming Professor of Botany, Charles Edward Moss, an acquaintance of Levyns who had previously run Cambridge University's herbarium.

32. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 602–605.

33. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, xi.

34. Levyns's struggles and impact on the field of taxonomy finds numerous parallels with the life of Joyce Vickery, a contemporary botanist in New South Wales. See C. Hooker, ‘Vickery, Joyce Winifred (1908–1979)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/vickery-joyce-winifred-11926/text21367, accessed 2 November 2011.

35. Van Sittert, ‘Making the Cape Floral Kingdom’, 124.

36. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 599.

37. [UCT] Levyns Family Papers, BC625, D9.32.

38. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 128.

39. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, x.

40. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 128.

41. M.R. Levyns, Guide to the Flora of the Cape Peninsula (Cape Town: Juta, 1929); Guide to the Flora of the Cape Peninsula, 2nd ed. (Cape Town: Juta, 1966).

42. ‘Botany Reviews’, South African Journal of Science, 63 (1967), 215. For her role in popular botany see Sittert, ‘Making the Cape Floral Kingdom’, 123.

43. O.A. Leistner, ‘Guide to the Cape Flora’, Taxon, 16 (1967), 140.

44. Levyns, Guide to the Flora of the Cape Peninsula, v.

45. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 132.

46. R. Adamson and T.M. Salter, eds, The Flora of the Cape Peninsula (Cape Town: Juta, 1950).

47. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, xi, 132.

48. Thiselton-Dyer, ‘Geographical Distribution of Plants’, in A.C. Seward, ed., Darwin and Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1909), 317; For a summary see J.W. Bews, ‘Some General Principles of Plant Distribution as Illustrated by the South African Flora’, Annals of Botany, 35, 137 (1921), 2–4.

49. Thiselton-Dyer, ‘Geographical Distribution of Plants’, 311.

50. Janet Browne, The Secular Ark. Studies in the History of Biogeography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 130–131.

51. See the three volumes of J.D. Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, Under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, Kr, R.N., F.R.S. & c. (London: Lovell Reeve, 1844, 1853, 1859).

52. J.D. Hooker, On the Flora of Australia: Its Origins, Affinities and Distributions; Being an Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), CIV.

53. H. Bolus, ‘Sketch of the Cape Flora’, in Official Handbook of the Cape of Good Hope: History, Productions and Resources (Cape Town: Saul Solomon, 1886), 295–297; H. Bolus and A.H. Wolley-Dod, A List of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Cape Peninsula, With Notes on Some of the Critical Species, 228–230. Bolus, ‘Sketch of the Floral Regions of South Africa’, in W. Flint and J.D.F. Gilchrist, eds, Science in South Africa: A Handbook and Review (Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller, 1905), 216–217; S. Schönland, ‘Origin of the Flora of South Africa’, in Report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science 5th Meeting Natal, 1907 (Cape Town: The Argus Printing and Publishing Company, 1908), 106.

54. S. Dubow, ‘A Commonwealth of Science: The British Association in South Africa, 1905 and 1929’, in S. Dubow, ed., Science and Society in Southern Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 80–81.

55. Cited from J.C. Smuts, Plans for a Better World: Speeches of Field-Marshall the Right Honorable J. C. Smuts (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1942), 142.

56. A.F.W. Schimper, Pflanzen-Geographie auf Physiologischer Grundlage (Gena: Verlag von Gustaf Fischer, 1898); Plant-Geography Upon a Physiological Basis, translated by W.R. Fisher (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1903).

57. Schimper, Plant-Geography, 507.

58. M.R. Levyns, ‘Some Evidence Bearing on the Past History of the Cape Flora’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 26 (1938), 421.

59. M.R. Levyns, ‘Some Evidence Bearing on the Past History of the Cape Flora’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 26 (1938), 401–424, 420–421. Other important papers include: M.R. Levyns, ‘Floral Evolution and Geographical Distribution in Lobostemon’, South African Journal of Science, 26 (1930), 318–320; ‘Clues to the Past in the Cape Flora of Today’, South African Journal of Science 49 (1952), 155–157; M.R. Levyns, ‘Some Geographic Features of the Family Polygalaceae, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 34 (1955), 386; ‘Past Plant Migrations in South Africa’, Annals of the Cape Provincial Museum, 2, 2 (1962), 8.

60. Levyns, ‘Some Evidence Bearing on the Past History of the Cape Flora’, 424.

61. S. Pooley, ‘Jan van Riebeeck as Pioneering Explorer and Conservator of Natural Resources at the Cape of Good Hope (1652–1962)’, Environment and History, 15, 1 (2009); Sittert, ‘The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze‘, 656.

62. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa; Pooley ‘Pressed Flowers’, 607; L. Sittert, ‘“Our Irrepressible Fellow-Colonist”: The Biological Invasion of Prickly Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) in the Eastern Cape c.1890-c.1910’, Journal of Historical Geography, 28, 3 (2002), 397–419; ‘The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze‘; K. Brown, ‘Political Entomology: The Insectile Challenge to Agricultural Development in the Cape Colony 1895–1910’, JSAS, 29, 2 (June 2003), 529–549; N. Visser, ‘A Space for Conflict: The Scab Acts of the Cape Colony, c 1874–1911’ (draft PhD thesis, University of Cape Town).

63. Pooley ‘Pressed Flowers’, 615–616.

64. M.R. Levyns, ‘Some Observations on the Effects of a Bush Fire on the Vegetation of Signal Hill, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 10 (1922), 230.

65. M.R. Levyns, ‘Veld-Burning Experiments at Ida's Valley, Stellenbosch’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 17, 2 (1929), 89.

66. Levyns, Guide to the Flora of the Cape Peninsula, V.

67. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 606.

68. Levyns, ‘A Preliminary Note on the Rhenoster Bush (Elytropappus Rhinocerotis) and the Germination of its seed’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 14, 4 (1926), 383–388, 383. On this issue, her thoughts presaged recent criticisms of invasion biology studies that critique practitioners for narrowly viewing ‘invasion’ in terms of exotic species rather than viewing it more neutrally as a question of succession ecology (which is less focused on defining whether a species is ‘native’ or ‘exotic’ and more focused on the dynamics of succession): M. Davis et al., ‘Vegetation Change: A Reunifying Concept in Plant Ecology’, Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 7, 1 (2005), 69–76.

69. For the removals in Sea Point in 1959–61 see U. Mesthrie, ‘The Tramway Road removals, 1959–61’ Kronos, 214 (1994), 61–78; M. Paulse, ‘“Everyone Had Their Differences But There Was Always Comradeship”: Tramway Road, Sea Point, 1920s to 1961’, in S. Field, ed., Lost Communities, Living Memories: Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town (Cape Town: David Philip, 2001), 44–61; and M. Paulse, ‘An Oral History of Tramway Road and Ilford Street, Sea Point, 1930s–2001: the Production of Place by Race, Class and Gender’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2002).

70. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 1. For the removals in Sea Point in 1959–61 see U. Mesthrie, ‘The Tramway Road removals, 1959–61’, Kronos, 214 (1994), 61–78; Paulse, ‘Everyone Had Their Differences…’; Paulse, ‘An Oral History of Tramway Road’.

71. Anonymous, ‘Floreat Peninsula’, The Star, 26 August 1966.

72. UCT, Levyns Family Papers, BC625, C7.5.

73. T.H. Trinder-Smith, The Levyns Guide to the Plant Genera of the Southwestern Cape (Cape Town: Bolus Herbarium, 2003).

74. C. Lighton, Cape Floral Kingdom: Classic Story of South African Wild Flowers (Cape Town: Juta, 1973), 111.

75. For discussions of the influence of this idea see G.A. Verboom et al., ‘Origin and Diversification of the Greater Cape flora: Ancient Species Repository, Hot-Bed of Recent Radiation, or Both?’, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 51, 1 (2009), 44–45.

76. M.R. Levyns, ‘Clues to the Past’.

77. M.R. Levyns, ‘Some Geographic Features of the Family Polygalaceae’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 34 (1955), 386.

78. M.R. Levyns, ‘Notes on the Biology of the Rhenoster Bush’, South African Journal of Science, 52 (1956), 143.

79. M.R. Levyns, ‘Past Plant Migrations in South Africa’, Annals of the Cape Provincial Museum, 2 (1962), 8.

80. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 151.

81. Levyns, ‘Past Plant Migrations in South Africa’, 7–10.

82. These groups included the Cape Natural History Club and the Mountain Club of South Africa, and the public propaganda of the Control of Alien Vegetation Committee and Cape Nature Conservation Department. For the quote see Control of Alien Vegetation Committee, The Green Cancers in South Africa: The Menace of Alien Vegetation (Cape Town: Citadel Press, 1959). During the 1950s, Levyns's husband actively supported the establishment of the Cape Department of Nature Conservation. See D. Hey, A Nature Conservationist Looks Back (Cape Town: Cape Nature Conservation, 1995), 87.

83. B.M. Bennett, ‘The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa, and Thailand, 1850–2000’, International Review of Social History, 55 (2010), 37.

84. B.M. Bennett, ‘The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa, and Thailand, 1850–2000’, International Review of Social History, 55 (2010), 36.

85. For the increasingly war-like language of invasion studies see Salisbury's paper presentation at the South African Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Cape Town, 1952. E. Salisbury, ‘Natural Selection and Plant Invasion’, South African Journal of Science, 49, 1 (1952): 115–119, 116. Chew argues that this war-like language developed in the 1920s, but became more broadly popularized in the late 1950s with the publication of Charles Elton's The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, (London: Methuen, 1958). See M. Chew, Ending with Elton: Preludes to Onvasion Biology (PhD, Arizona State University, 2006). The influence of Elton on early studies of invasion in South Africa is an important subject that remains to be studied.

86. For her use of the term ‘invader’ to describe African flora see Levyns, ‘Clues to the Past’, 160.

87. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 153. This plant is considered rare in South Africa but has naturalised in Western Australia. See, http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/1520, accessed 20 June 2011.

88. UCT, Levyns Family Papers, BC625, M10.

89. Levyns, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, 50.

90. M.T. Hoffman and R. Rohde, ‘Rivers Through Time: Historical Changes in the Riparian Vegetation of the Semi-Arid, Winter Rainfall Region of South Africa in Response to Climate and Land Use’, Journal of the History of Biology, 44 (2011), 59–80.

91. Bennett, ‘Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa’, 265–268. For a scientific review of these dynamics see D. Richardson, ‘Forestry Trees as Invasive Aliens’, Conservation Biology, 12, 1 (February, 1998), 18–26.

92. See the historic analysis of G.L. Shaughnessy, ‘Historical Ecology of Alien Woody Plants in the Vicinity of Cape Town, South Africa’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1980).

93. M.R. Levyns, ‘Clues to the Past’, 163.

94. M.R. Levyns, ‘Clues to the Past’, 163.

95. See the dedication in Richard Cowling, ed., The Ecology of Fynbos: Nutrients, Fire and Diversity (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1992): cited from Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers’, 615.