SUNRIDGE PRIMARY SCHOOL / PRIMÊRE SKOOL SUNRIDGE, Sunridge Park, Port Elizabeth
Arms registered with the Bureau of Heraldry on 27 February 1995, certificate No 2738 (issued in Afrikaans). The blazon reads:
Arms: Argent, a strelitzia flower contourné, slipped, proper and in sinister base two annulets interlaced in fess, Orange and Azure; the whole within an orle of the last.
Motto: Conjuncti crescimus.
About the arms:
The principal charge is a strelitzia flower, Strelitzia reginĉ.[1]
This flower, indigenous to the Eastern Cape, is the typical species of a genus named for Queen Charlotte of Great Britain, consort of King George III, who was a daughter of Grand Duke Karl Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.[2] The generic name is taken from the dukes capital city (Strelitz); the specific name alludes to Charlotte as Queen.
Strelitziaciĉ are a family of flowering plants in the order Zingiberales (ginger), ranging in size from perennial herbs to trees. All five species of Strelitzia are indigenous to Southern Africa.
S reginĉ, also called the crane flower or the bird-of-paradise flower, grows from rhizomes (underground stems) and reaches roughly waist height. It can produce many flowering heads on one plant, and each head produces several flowers in succession. This species produces greyish-green to green banana-like leaves.
A species unique to the environs of Port Elizabeth is S juncea, which has flowers indistinguishable from S reginĉ but its leaves are curled up into cylindrical reed-like stalks.
Although restricted in nature to the Eastern Cape and the coastal areas of Zululand, this striking species (S reginĉ) has been adopted as a symbol in distant places. It was the floral symbol of the Province of Natal even though it does not occur naturally in the Mzimkhulu-Thukela region that was the old Colony of Natal and it is now part of the arms of KwaZulu-Natal. It is additionally a symbol of the City of Los Angeles, California. Within the Eastern Cape, it appears in the arms of Strelitzia High School, Uitenhage; and 6 SA Infantry Battalion, Grahamstown.
The flower is blazoned as contourné, meaning that it faces the sinister side that is, the left of the shield as seen from behind. Charges on a shield normally face the dexter (right). Any deviation from this rule is mentioned specifically in the blazon.
In heraldry, conjoined annulets are frequently the mark of an adopted son, signifying the joining of two families. In this instance they would appear to symbolise the joining of the Afrikaans- and English-speaking communities in one school.
In Afrikaans, annulets are called ringe, but in English heraldic language the word ring is restricted to a ring that (in theory) can actually be worn on the finger, and always has a stone set in it.
The orle is a stripe following the outline of the shield, set inwards from the edge. It is blue, a colour repeated in both the flower and the sinister annulet.
The colour orange (usually blazoned as tenné; it appears in both the strelitzia and the dexter annulet) is not one of the usual colours of heraldry. It falls into the category of stains, of which there are only three, and in traditional heraldry all three are rare.
The three stains are: murrey (mulberry colour), sanguine (the colour of blood) and tenné or orange.
The tenné of traditional heraldry is more a light tan, but is interpreted in Dutch and South African heraldry as orange, because of that colours symbolism representing the House of Orange, and is often encountered in South African arms.
Orange, white and blue are the colours of the South African flag in use from 1928 to 1994, so the choice of colours could well have been patriotic. The same colours (although in an entirely different combination) also appear in the arms of the neighbouring Lorraine Primary School.
The motto, Conjuncti crescimus, translates as: Together we grow.
About the school:
Sunridge Primary is a parallel-medium co-educational primary school (Grades 1 to 7 or, according to the old Cape system, Sub A to Std 5).
The school first opened in January 1967 with 97 children. It primarily serves the suburbs of Sunridge Park, Framesby and Fernglen.
The school has its own website here.
