This edition

Welcome. Here we are again in a new year. Ages ago, we endeavoured to produce around three issues of a branch magazine every year. Printed for our local members and then published to the internet. I am quite pleased that whenever I search for almost anything succulent on the internet, pages of Northants News come up immediately. Behold another year lies ahead. With enough articles to fill half the summer issue. I am optimistic!

Modzilla? Apologies to all. The cactus clubs (that’s the cosh, not the branches) I showed at ELK were Ariocarpus ‘Godzilla’ not ‘Modzilla’ as I thought. Thanks to Bill Darbon who pointed this out within milliseconds of opening his issue of NN 25.3. So all the faithful should open this edition at page 3, wield the white correction fluid, and correct the initial letter. Good news is that the internet edition will be correct. While you are waiting for the paint to dry, here is an image of an Ariocarpus MMMm Godzilla grown near here. Loved by some? Maybe only by his mother. Right: Ariocarpus 'Godzilla'

Viscum minimum

In 2007 NN had an article about Viscum minimum. You surely remember? Roland wrote the article about this parasitic mistletoe growing on a cultivated Euphorbia horrida and I took pictures of the minute flowers and developing fruits and ripe, red berries. These were taken with a macro lens at almost maximum enlargement, we are talking about a curious plant, not a stunning one. The flowers were only a millimetre or two and the fruits not much bigger.

Roland generously gave me an infested, rooted cutting of the Euphorbia and I have grown it now for six years. Every year it has flowered and every year it has not set seed. A correspondent asked for seed. Not yet. I have taken cuttings, but these do not appear to have the Viscum present. None is yet seen on any of the many offsets. I was beginning to wonder if my regime of only just above (and occasionally below) freezing was affecting the development of fertilisation and even growth of this parasite.

Now happy news. There are bright green, fat fruits on my Viscum. Maybe they will turn red. Maybe they will have viable seed. Maybe I can rush round and infect all my Euphorbia obesa. Maybe not, but it would be nice to see a project through.

More on the Banstead Bash

(I apologise for calling it a ‘bash’ but it sounds so nice.)

Last Autumn I sent Roland some of the images I had snapped at the Mesemb Study Group display. The idea was to stimulate an article and it worked. Using some of our images, Roland produced an interesting piece for our magazine.

Among the images I sent was this (top right) which has the label Sphalmanthus tenuiflorus, though some, especially the IHSP, call it a Phyllobolus.

Roland studiously ignored it but I thought it was one of the more interesting plants there. However, not by a long way one of the prettiest. It was displayed by Derek Tribble, that expert on so many succulently things of South Africa. As is my way, I asked Derek if it was alive. “Of course it is, it leafs up every autumn.”

The plant struck a chord in my memory and searching my computer I found I had snapped an image at Tony and Suzanne Mace’s showing a shelf with half a dozen plants variously called Phyllobolus and Sphalmanthus. I had taken the picture to remind me to look the plants up! This was in May and the plants were in leaf, long and cylindrical, growing in tufts from a woody caudex. The plants generally resembled some Tylecodons though not, of course, in flower.

The IHSP adds a note that “of particular interest are the flowers of P. tenuiflorus which may show greyish pink or greenish yellow outer petals within a single population”. So just like Pediocactus simpsonii which also has flowers of different colours in a colony; I said it was an interesting plant.

‘Vygies, Gems of the Veld’ says ‘Seldom grown, rapid growing plants’. So now we know. Almost everything.

Ooooh, what’s that smell?

When the FL arrived home from a few days away she immediately complained of a ‘smell’ in the house. She always gives me a guilty conscience about my housekeeping and notices immediately the odd speck on the carpet or a drip on the kitchen floor. What was my transgression here? Or was the cat responsible?

She soon traced the ‘smell’ to a spare bedroom and after quickly looking under the beds she traced the whiff to my Sansevierias and in particular a flowering S. parva ‘Variegata’. Now, I always think that the smell of flowers is a scent and if it is nice then a fragrance or bouquet. Sue said this was a smell, stench or pong. Since I had a bad head cold and no sense of smell, who was I to judge? Asked to be more specific about the nuances of the scent, Sue listed heavy, sweet, sickly and stale. It was especially the stale element that would have the plant banished. I have read ‘musty’ as a description of some Sansevieria flowers. Yes, musty is definitely right, she agreed. So the flowers were cut off and composted. But not immediately. You surely didn’t think that the plant would be sacrificed to my wife’s overdelicate nose? You can however be assured that as soon as daylight came the plant was whisked out to the studio (well a greenhouse – it was raining), and the defining photos snapped. Meanwhile at our January, evening cactus meeting, (Lightning short AGM, a challenging quiz won by the Ed - Yes!  and some lovely images of Wisley) the Sansevieria was put on display for those lovers of the finest plants in the world to  give a written comment on the aroma. What did these experts think? (Too) sweet, Hyacinth, also jasmine and lime? The majority liked it but Hugh couldn’t smell anything at all. Like me but I had that cold. So it seems the FL is the odd one out. If she doesn’t like the smell of Sansevieria parva in the house in January she should move to a greenhouse. The greenhouses here are far too cold for Sansevierias. Though having written that I read on Google that S. parva is ‘native to cooler mountains of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, it is probably the hardiest of the Sansevierias’.

Zone meetings

At NMK we enjoy a programme of great talks and events every year. But as members of the BCSS we are entitled to attend the meetings of other branches. As I write this I have recently listened to talks at Luton by Jonathan Clark and Derek Tribble on Lithops and Crassula respectively. Experts on their subjects. There is some travel time and petrol money but these are still  cheap evenings out; have you seen the price of theatre or concert tickets? I get my information about Zone events from the link on our website and Oxford and Birmingham have meetings advertised on their websites within range for a special speaker, I have marked down Derek Tribble’s new talk on his 2014 South African travels as a must go. 8th July at Cambridge if you want a lift.

So in this edition

we have the usual stuff. I am especially glad that David has started to write an account of his Peru trip for us. And that’s one meeting I am certainly looking forward to. Enjoy the mag!

Trev