Species Aulax pallasia
Pictures from Observations
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Named after Dr Dietrich Pallas (1768-1840), pharmacist and owner of the first apothecary shop in Cape Town.
born in Alsace 1768, qualified in medicine in Paris and came to the Cape in 1791 as surgeon in Comte de Meuron’s Swiss Regiment, later becoming surgeon-major to the Cape Garrison. He started the first apothecary shop in Cape Town and, in 1802, engaged Pieter Heinrich Poleman (q.v.) to manage it for him. They became partners in 1810 and the firm lasted until Poleman’s death in 1839, when the shop in Strand Street was sold to S.H. Scheuble & Co. Pallas, who had been in his dotage for some years (C.F. Drège records in his diary in the middle 1820s: ‘he goes about in his underclothes and night shirt all day, wandering about and grumbling’), died a year later, in 1840. Pallas is not known to have collected plants, though a few specimens are credited to Mme Pallas. Bergius also made the mistake of staying with the Pallas family and apparently the smells emanating from some of his zoological specimens provided a "source of friction".