Lawrence suggested I finish what I had to say about the retusa combobulation. Actually I find myself just plain exhausted trying to explain why I name things the way I do when so many otherwise knowledgeable enthusiasts are in real ignorance about the fundamental problems of Haworthia classification and identification. I was just writing about populations of plants in a very wide area between Steytlerville and Oudtshoorn, explaining that it was nigh impossible to decide whether they are decipiens, mucronata, bolusii or cooperi once the easy conclusion was made that they were not arachnoidea. This all reduces argument in the retusoids to absurdity. Someone tell me what these are and why?

I felt the need to say something about how, at the end of my useful life, what my feelings are about (my) classification of Haworthia. It so happens that I was extraordinarily fortunate to have had the confidences of some very distinguished people as they closed their lives down. People like Prof. R H. Compton, Dr R.A. Dyer, Dr Alan Codd, Mrs A. Obermeyer, Dr Courtney-Latimer, Dr O. Hilyard and others in botany. also in other sciences like Dr H.K. Munro, Dr B.K. Petty, Dr B. Smit from entomology. Col. C.L. Scott came to the same place. The common factor was an admission that really they did not know very much. I thought a word that would cover the state of mind would be “pragmatism”. That is until I checked the definition of the word, “Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience.” What about the product of my experience  “experience” – the knowledge that you acquire by the time you do not need it anymore) projecting abstraction??? The funny thing is that the rules of nomenclature confound the purpose of classification. The purpose of classification is to identify all the basic life forms and to organise them in the system and order of their historic origins. Just as pragmatism can be left unexplained and confounded in many words and pages of incomprehensible text, so is my classification of Haworthia. A point is “groenewaldii”, where I suggest it really should be H. mutica var. groenewaldii. This is a conceptual trap! Combobulation cannot be avoided. All the evidence I see is that there is a single system that what we call turgida is the strongest possible contender for origin. The problem is that nomenclatural rule is that if retusa has its origin in turgida, the name retusa must be upheld for the system. Do you follow that??? In my explanation of the “species” mutica, I explain it as emanating from the interaction of mirabilis and retusa. So it is quite wrong to use the combination of mutica var. groenwaldii. It should be retusa var. groenewaldii and still more correctly H. turgida var. groenewaldii. I am presently really just enjoying sharing my thoughts about some “species” that will surely trouble anyone wanting certainty in identification and names. ♦