Took advantage of it warming up a bit to head to Kew for a plant fix. It seems not even they are not immune to problems in heating their green houses. Some plants in the large temperate house were looking cold damaged and there were some huge air pipes running though the windows to emergency heaters. It looks like their heating failed at exactly the wrong time.
The only succulent I wanted to check on in this house, is the bulbine latifolia. As you can see it is now in full flower. This was the final thing I needed to check the name, and they have got it labeled wrong. Their label has it as bulbinella latifolia ssp latifolia, you would think they would be able to tell the difference.
Thankfully the rest of the succulents are in a different house. The aloes are no almost all either in flower or just starting, the aloe vacilans flowers are out.
As are the variegated aloe arborescens. I have never seen this one in flower so it was good to finally see it. Even if it was doing its best to hide.
Finally the bromeliad section was also coming into flower, the log has developed even in a small time since my last visit.
so aloe vacilans are the ones with yellow flowers? how are they different from the red ones we have all over laguna beach?
ReplyDeleteJR: Yes the aloe vacilans have yellow flowers (the second photo in this post). There seems to be three varieties, This is from the website Dave's Garden:
ReplyDeleteAloe vacillans v. audhalica: Has short pinkish red flowers.
Aloe vacillans v. dhalensis: Has short yellow flowers.
Aloe vacillans v. vacillans: Has tall yellow flowers.
So I am guessing the ones you have are the v. audhalica which explains the different flower colour.
Those aloes are amazing!
ReplyDeleteHa ha! You should email them about their naming difficulties
ReplyDelete