17 February 2010
Where did all those come from?
Posted by Stuart under: Other Succulents .
I developed a liking for haworthias and gasterias in 2007, when a couple of very kind people from the BCSS forum sent me some plants and cuttings. At that stage it was a little more than idle curiosity, but not a lot more.
Unfortunately, they proved to be rather fascinating to grow. Oh dear.
Now, as a group, the Asphodelaceae as a family – which includes Haworthia and Gasteria, plus a load of other genera that I don’t grow at all – is the second most numerous in my collection after the opuntias.
How on earth did that happen?
Well, the rot really set in when I was helping at the BCSS 2008 National Show; I was assisting with manning the Tephrocactus Study Group stand, as well as doing some shopping.
Robert Wellens, from Succulent Tissue Culture, was there with a vast assortment of these plants, all wonderfully well-grown. As if I hadn’t already spent enough before I got round to him, I proceeded to give him more money than I’d handed over to all the other traders put together. I came back with, if I remember rightly, about eight or nine plants, including a fabulous hybrid between Haworthia springbokvlakensis and H. comptoniana which, to all intents and purposes, looks like the former. It even has its habit of pulling itself down into the pot.
Then, last year, as well as an abundance of haworthias, I was given a load of gasterias by a friend in Norfolk (thanks Ray!) and that started me off with them. If anything, I’d have to say that of the two genera, I’m probably slightly more besotted with gasterias than I am with haworthias. This may have something to do with the fact that they’re easier from seed. More of that in a moment.
A good number of my haworthias are pretty tatty. In fact some of them look like they’re (still) at death’s door.
There’s a good reason for this – when I acquired those particular plants, they were indeed at death’s door.
I was given them by the widower of a former member of Birmingham Branch of the BCSS, who was clearing out his late wife’s plants. She had been ill for a while before her death. When I spoke to him about them, he reckoned that the plants had been without water for at least two years, possibly three. That they had survived this treatment, dry and cooped up without ventilation, for that long is testament to their extraordinary survival skills. And it’s given me a tremendous amount of pleasure to revive these plants as I remember the lady in question from when I was a member of the BCSS as a young lad in the mid-to-late 1980s.
I said I’d return to the subject of seed-raising. I’ve already grown two forms of Gasteria pulchra, G. baylissiana, and a hybrid of G. bicolor x excelsa. It’s anyone’s guess how the last of those is going to turn out. Gasteria seed seems to yield similar results to mesemb seed, i.e. sow 10 seeds and you get 12 plants, whereas haworthias are a lot less accommodating. That said, I have a few nice H. springbokvlakensis seedlings sown last year which are doing well, and a beautifully dark H. bayeri.
I’ve sown seed of 15 different species and forms of gasteria this year, obtained from Steven Brack at Mesa Garden. Most of them have some habitat data. Swaps anyone?
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