With small evergreen foliage covering tall braches, long green whips individually thin but collectively capable of forming a dense thicket, berzelia looks to me a bit like giant sequoia minus the towering trunk, as if someone has cut out a small segment of that massive canopy and rooted it directly into the ground. I am also reminded of the Norfolk pine potted up in my apartment, and the untrimmed juniper down the street. But looking at this berzelia, I’m very far away from those giant sequoias and the plants in my neighborhood. This is the Western Cape of South Africa and bringing my thoughts back to where I am right now, berzelia foliage reminds me of heather (Erica sp.), the low-growing shrubs which are one of the most prevalent and diverse plants in this wild fynbos landscape. We have been seeing the ropey needle-clad stems of heather everywhere. Because of that and the various other plants it reminds me of, my first impress of berzelia is that I’ve seen it before. Still in spite of the similarity to so many familiar plants, berzelia isn’t quite like anything else. As for robots of the creepy uncanny valley, so human and yet lacking some inscrutable human quality which exposes them for what they are, so for berzelia. They so nearly achieve abject normalcy, but walking closer it becomes clear there is something bizarre about this plant.