Contents Volume 22. No 1
Spring 2011
| Editorial and more.. | Trevor Wray |
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Roland Tebbenham |
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Hugh Balhatchet |
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Stephanie Bahja |
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Trevor Wray |
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| Echeveria 'Zaragosa' | Trevor Wray |
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Cover
picture: Our
cover picture for this issue is of the growing point of Uebelmannia
pectinifera growing in Don Campbell’s collection. Bearing in mind
that Don lives in Grand Junction, Colorado where it is cold (cold, cold)
in winter, I asked whether the plant had any special treatment. No, it
grew with the others in his sun-room, a glassy conservatory. No wonder
he grows his plants so well!
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EDITORIAL and more..... |
Greetings…
2011 is
an important year for members in the NMK branch of the BCSS. On a personal level
you will try something new to grow, (within the general scope of succulents or
cacti). You might try new cultivation methods, subscribe to new journals,
contribute to or read the online forums. Attend relevant conventions. You might
write an article for our magazine, Northants News will welcome your written
contribution.
Or maybe
you will just water the plants you have and be amazed as they grow and produce
those fabulous flowers.
During
2011 you have an opportunity to visit other collections: locally in the NMK area
from the list on our programme card, or on August 7th, the collections of
Leicester members of our society. These are a great opportunity to see many
desirable plants, and maybe buy seedlings or scrounge cuttings.
Show-wise
our branch show is on August 13th & 14th and you should enter any show
worthy plants you have. Firstly to promote our growing hobby to the outside
world and also because you might be favoured by our judge with a prize card.
Show
wise our Zone of the BCSS has a show on 21st May hosted by Coventry at Dunchurch.
Do not feel intimidated; if you have a good plant exhibit it. If you do not,
just come along and look at some super show plants. Who knows, you might just
feel you have something better at home. So next year…
And
naturally Roland has produced a great programme of cactus and succulent talks
for the branch through the year.
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Homework I
should have been working on NN but I was not. I was surfing Ebay for things… I
generally look at the books on our hobby and so I typed in ‘cactus’ into the
item box intending to add ‘books’ into the category box. These search
engines like to be helpful and make suggestions. ‘Cactus, inflatable’ popped
up as I typed. How can you resist? The
image showed three saguaros, (cognoscenti say ‘sahwahoss’ which is near
enough), or San Pedro cacti; without flowers it is difficult to tell. The unit
is ‘made from 610g double sided bouncy castle PVC’ by ‘a very respected UK
manufacturer’. Naturally you will ask if it will fit your greenhouse and it
would be a squeeze here. It is 12 feet wide with three 5 foot cacti. |
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Probably more manageable were the next items; a great many 34 inch cereioid cacti. A couple of species here The Hawaiian Beachluau mexicanparty inflatablecactus. (Image on the left) , That’s Luau not Lau by the way; and Inflatablecactus plant-tree (right). I suppose they might be the same genus to look at the images.One
thing is for certain – none of these Inflatablecactus
are
going to be compatible with the more conventional spikies we grow. However they will be drought resistant. |
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My
A to Z
Bill
Morris’ A to Z talk last year got me pondering… It could be amusing to pass
the time in the traffic jams by thinking of cactus genera that correspond to
each letter of the alphabet. A is for Astrophytum, B is for Borzicactus etc. Q
has only one solution… Quiabentia, and just how sad can a computer be? Mine
can spell this genus (I think). There are no Xs that I know, but two Zs.
Zygocactus is easy but there is also Zehntnerella. Mrs. Dell wasn’t aware of
this one and I didn’t bother to add it to the spell checker as it is
considered to be Facheiroa, (which she knew - I before E except after CH).
Facheiroa is a genus of Brazilian tree cacti with a resemblance to Espostoa as
you know.
This
little exercise is pretty easy but if you want to make it more difficult you
might try for only those genera which are accepted in the CITES Checklist or New
Cactus Lexicon, (BTW they do not have quite the same list of accepted genera).
When you
tire of this game you could try the same for the other succulents. There are
three Zs (at least); Zehneria, Zygophyllum (not Zygopyllum as Jacobson spells it
at the top of P394 in his Lexicon) and Zeuktophyllum. There is also an X which
is quite (OK, fairly) well known. I’ll let you look that one up yourself. And
yes, Mrs. Dell can spell that one as well!
This
Winter
I have
written many times about the hardiness of our plants, (or not!). The winter of
2009/2010 was the worst for years and some surprising plants survived in a cold
greenhouse.
This
winter we had the coldest December ever
and many of those plants which I had considered bone hardy perished. This
included nearly all the members of the Crassula family which had survived many
years in this greenhouse. Perhaps many of these plants were still damp from the
growing season when the extreme cold set in. There were even some casualties
among the cacti. Good news is that most of the plants in the heated (to -2°C!) greenhouses survived. I want to know when this
Global Warming is coming. In the meantime I am leaving every light on in the
house. (Just teasing, Sue.)
This
issue of NN brings you a major tour of Graham Charles’
greenhouse, some more
on the last Show with the joys of winning and a bit about Sansevierias. Enjoy.
Trev
trevorwray@aol.com
