Species Nivenia spicata

For James Niven (1776–1827), Scottish gardener at the Royal Botanical Garden of Edinburgh and at Syon House, Middlesex. He collected plants in South Africa from 1798–1803 for his patron, George Hibbert, in Clapham, London. Three months after his return to England he went back to the Cape as botanical collector for Empress Josephine of France and James Lee and John Kennedy of the Vineyard Nursery, Hammersmith, near London. He spent a further nine years at the Cape collecting herbarium specimens, seeds and bulbs but also visiting areas such as Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape to Clanwilliam northwest of Cape Town, returning to England in 1812 and setting up his own business, unrelated to botany.