Brilliant botanical illustrations hint at the primordial origins of wine.

If you know what a grape vine looks like, and have observed the marvellous, understated way and time it breaks out in flower - a vital phase in the entire process of producing wine - four splendid pictures on the current Kirstenbosch Botanical Art Biennale will tickle your mind.

Botanical artist Inger Murray has on show four drawings of different Cyphostemma plants, which, with a good look, bear a resemblance to a grape vine. One, officially-named Cyphostemma juttae, is highly sought after, and variously known as a 'wild grape, tree grape, Namibian grape, or, more lyrically, 'droog-my-keel' (Dry-my-throat).

This plant, which belongs to the Vitaceae family, like the others illustrated on the show are highly threatened in its natural desert environment of northwest Namibia.

There is a delicious irony to the fact that these plants, all of which are indigenous to water-scarce regions, have a distant family connection to the chenin blanc and chardonnay grapes in our vineyards. That these plants are endangered in their natural habitat, put row upon row of Vitis vinifera in our landscape in a different environmental light .

The resemblance in flowers and buds is there, as well in the shape of the leaves (the 'desert vines' have succulent versions). And in Murray's drawing of the Cyphostemma uter the berries look remarkably like mini grapes! (But botanists say the high acidity scares off animals.)

One can hardly imagine a vineyard - like those that now carpet our once fynbos-laded Cape hills - of Cyphostemma, but one can admire Inger Murray's exquisite illustration and contemplate where wine originally comes from.

*The Kirstenbosch Botanical Art Biennale 2010 is at the Old Mutual Conference Centre, until September 24. More info: 021-799 8783.

** The real 'grapes' of Cyphostemma bainsii.