Cactus and Succulent Society of America Show 2016

It's time for the National Show, held July 2 and 3 this year at the Huntington Botanical Garden.  I will be showing and selling both plants and pots.  Here is a selection of the plants ready for the show.  Which ones make it will be determined at the last minute.  There are a few that might get added, and few that might not go.

Astrophytum asterias, entered in generally just one show a year, and often into the CSSA show.  It's beginning to show its age, but still worth showing again. It's in one of my earlier pots when I was beginning to explore runny glazes.

Astrophytum 'Lotusland' again in one of my pots.  A closer look at the plant shows it is beginning to push against the pot.  I'll have to cut the bottom off and restart it.  This is a re-start from an original plant that became so heavy it broke off of the graft.

Astrophytum Onzuka Crest

Again in my pot.  I've made quite a few of these deep round pots with different glazes.  They are filled mostly with large pumice pieces.  Again a view of the plant

Next is Bowiea volubilis, boxed for transportation.  When it gets to the show table, the metal stake will be removed and the leaves will be arranged to drape off the side of the table.

I wrote an article on Frailea for the CSSA journal last month, commenting on their lack of appearance on the show tables.  This is Frailea pygmaea var. aurea.  It is a pot made by Tom Vermillion.

Next is Mammillaria crucigera.  If you look at older blogs, this makes a frequent appearance, with a few more heads each time.  It is in a wonderful Joe Wujcik pot, but appearing in this pot for the last time.  It will go into a larger pot after this show, and probably rest until sometime next year.

Pterocactus tuberosus a great plant from the Argentine Altiplano.  Easy to grow, but it takes a few years to get this large.  It is in one of my pots.

Finishing up with a few Haworthias,  This is Haworthia emelyae var picta. These pots are made just to show Haworthias.

Haworthia 'White Wolf'' a classic form that is nearly impossible to properly photograph and one that loses some of its best qualities when ween under artificial lighting..  Many of these have flower stalks and are being entered with the stalks left on.  The plants will be used for hybrids.

Haworthia 'Karasujyou' ends this year's selection.  There are 20 plants overall ready for the show, with last minute changes nearly certain.

Northern Namibian Succulents

Namibia continued.

After the Welwitchias we went looking for the other monumental succulents in Namibia.

The first, and our near constant companion was Euphorbia virosa.

And just to give some scale

There are only a few pictures from each of the plant communities.  None of these were rare in their locality.

Cyphostemma currori

From the same location

And miles away

Adenium boehmianium

The flowers look just like the ones on the plants growing in cultivation in California.

The plants are something else again

We can't this size and aged appearance in cultivation

Pachypodium lealii  Each one a spectacular sculpture.  These are not small plants.

 A few Adansonia decaryi

Again for scale, and not near one of the larger plants.  There is a person or the left.

There were lots more, Hoodias, Tavarasia, Aloes, and many many acacias that I'm just beginning to appreciate.

Welwitschias!

May was spent in Namibia, a first trip to this wonderful country.  It is a country of extraordinary contrasts in every way possible.  A modern capital city, and 50 km away tribal groups living in essentially 4th world conditions.  The trip was arranged by Guillermo Rivera of South American Nature Tours.  Sean Braine of  Batis Birding Tours was our guide.  Donald Smith, a lithoparian from England, Stan Yaloff from San Diego and Joey Glickman and Jenny Flannery of Los Angeles made up the rest of the group.  We were there to look at plants, and here are few Welwitschias.

Welwitschia mirabilis in Swatkop River Canyon with fellow travelers Stan Yaloff in Orange and Jenny Flannery walking out of the picture on right.  We spent several days looking at Welwitschias, which are more variable than you might expect.  Looking closer at these.

 

There are only two leaves, but as the plants age (these are a bit over 100 years) then the leaves become more and more fragmented with bare spots from the main stem.

A better look at the one in the lower left of the first picture.

 

And for scale sitting next to a female plant full of cones, each with hundreds of seeds and dozens of orange bugs resembling beetles eating them.  We never saw the orange bugs anywhere except on Welwitschias, and saw them on every Welwitschia with cones.  They are the  Welwitschia Bug (Probergrothius sexpunctatis) to be fully latinized.

Swatkop River Canyon is home to not only fantastic plants but also to amazing geology.  A diorite dike cuts through a rock range.  Deep in the canyon are these intersecting diorite dikes, the record of early geologic upheavals in what is the oldest desert in the world.

The following day we headed further up the coast to look at some larger specimens.

And for scale again

The largest of these plants is about 700 years old.  Not shown are the seedling plants, only 20 to 50 years old that are around all of the more photogenic plants.  These are not rare, there are thousands that we could see from out van.

Much further east there is another population of Welwitschias that are out of the fog belt and live on sporadic summer rain.  They are much smaller, and the color appears slightly different, although this could easily be the soil.  Everything we saw reflected the local soil color.

Next on to the other great plants of Namibia!