Red and White Roses - Barty and Meg Allen

He Pioneered Transkei Fruit

Sacred bananas smuggled

EAST LONDON. – The first man to introduce sub-tropical fruit into the Transkei has died at Manubi, near Butterworth, aged 81.

He was Mr. Ted Allen, one of the Transkei’s oldest and best-known residents.

Mr. Allen, who died after a long illness, would have been 82 this month.

He lived at Manubi Forest, where he was Postmaster, for 50 years.

It is chiefly due to his early experiments that sub-tropical fruit is grown extensively today along the coast region.

A strange mission

A keen horticulturist, he wrote to many parts of the world for plants and seeds, and gradually built up a successful garden of exotic fruit and flowers in the heart of Manubi forest.

His interests brought him a strange mission some years age when he was asked to take care of a rare banana plant.

A horticulturist had smuggled the plant out of India, but heard that agents of a fanatical Indian sect, which regarded the plant as sacred, were trailing him to South Africa.

Determined to keep the plant, he sent it to Mr. Allen for safekeeping, since Indians were  not allowed into Transkei.

Yellow cobra

Unafraid of revenge that might overtake him, Mr. Allen watched the first bunch of fruit ripening.

Then came the day when he cut the oversized bunch.

As Mr. Allen staggered towards the house, the bananas held on his shoulders, he called to his wife to come and see the prize.

She appeared and was immediately horrified to see a large yellow cobra writhing out of the golden coloured fruit, a few inches from her husband’s head.

She screamed and he threw down the “sacred” bananas. The snake slithered away to safety.

Every morning of the 40 years of his married life, till he became seriously ill, Mr. Allen presented his wife with a white and a red rose.

He cultivated special rose trees to make this possible, and explained the custom with the story of the day he proposed to his wife.

He was afraid to ask the important question, so he held out two roses. Beforehand he had decided that if she chose the white flower, he would say nothing.

If she took the red one, he had a good chance and would ask her to marry him.

She took both roses.

Besides being a naturalist, Mr. Allen was a poet and writer, though he made little attempt to publish his work.

His family may publish his papers.

(Newspaper cutting of 1955, transcribed by David Allen, grandson)