Prenia sladeniana, a Richtersveld vygie

Prenia sladeniana is a white-flowered, creeping succulent, a mesemb of the desert, noted for its industrious covering of some sand in the thirsty land of extreme temperatures. Scientists have found that water loss from the young leaves is significantly lower where the older leaves remain on the shoot; maybe a case of transferring the juices.

The brick-red leaves and white flowers are common in the plant’s restricted Richtersveld and southern Namibian distribution. Other plants found here are extremely rare. As and if the ambient temperature of the desert in the northwest (and elsewhere) is to rise in the time to come, more plants will become rare, some or many will disappear.

The common plant that can readily be found and the elusive, nearly extinct one, hunted for years or seen few times over a long life are both likely to be studied. Different mentalities will pick the one over the other, relating to pragmatism, fortitude and other personality attributes, apart from money and opportunity.

Human motivation and interest influence both the progress and direction of our science. People collectively know both very much and very little of the world. So many scientists with so many interests and still we play knowledge roulette with what our species learns; and therefore with what remains unknown.

Science or our science? In one sense scientific knowledge is objective, how the world is, no matter who or what discovered it. In another sense, it is only the collective history of humanitys search and discovery over our ages; our scientific history. Not only how we evolved as a species but how our learning, thought and discovery evolved. Saying more about us than about science: A race that expanded knowledge through war, inhibited it through religion.

Later, our bit can be added in the Universal Museum of Science on some unknown planet, thousands or millions of years from now and untold light-years away. When the efforts of inhabitants of many (all?) worlds are recorded for posterity at a scale vastly beyond our current imagination.

Looking back, all the significant bits of our accumulated knowledge have at some point stirred the curiosity and efforts of a person or people with ability and opportunity for unravelling and packaging a discovery in digestible form.

What nobody has thought to investigate remains for later generations or never to be discovered, made more accessible or more inaccessible by what is known already and by what we choose to do and leave.

And by chance at many levels (Le Roux, et al, 2005; Smith, et al, 1998; Herre, 1971; iNaturalist; http://llifle.com).