Echeveria John Catlin

This is a strange one: a beautiful white echeveria, but I know very little about it and have not see it anywhere else.  It was purchased at the BCSS national show 8 years ago, from Eau Brink cactus nursery, so a really good source and I would have expected to find more out there.

This was it back in 2011, as you can see it has more pointed leaves than Lauii but is just a white and attention grabbing.

It is one that never offsets, and despite all my efforts, none of my tricks have worked to get that first pup.  Then I tried top cutting  and again nothing.  The top rooted, thankfully, but the base did nothing.  At that point I sort of gave up trying at least in the short erm.

In one last effort I have been letting it grow, forming that perfect trunk.

So a few weeks back I took the plunge and top cut it again, the top was planted up and I was pretty certain it would root without too much problems.

The big question would a few extra years of experience top cutting pay off with offsets forming on the base trunk.

Yep three precious little babies on that trunk today. You can imagine how pleased I am, even if it isn't the best time for them to have formed. You can guarantee that this is one plant that will be watched very carefully over winter.

Obviously this success has gone to my head and I am now picturing a greenhouse full of them in a couple of years. To be honest I'm not going to push my luck, I'll be happy if these offsets make it to rooted established plants.

Manfredas and mangaves

Like most people the preparations for winter have started to gather pace, and this weekend saw the pots put in the greenhouse to start drying them off.

It was a lovely autumn weekend, lovely and warm in the sun, then cold as soon as it goes in.  It made moving everything in easy, but is sad as summer is over.

Putting the plants away is an important time for me; as each pot goes in it gets a little health check looking for bugs and damage.  Then once they have dried out, they get a final water for the year this time with a dose of anti vine weevil stuff.

I've had a big cull of plants over the last year or two,  getting rid of plants that no longer held their own and a lot of duplicates.  The only set of plants that has been totally unscathed are the manfredas and mangaves.  You can see my largest manfreda in the photo above, a manfreda guttata.

Manfredas are a great family of plants, very underestimated.  In the UK there are two or three more common ones you can find if you search for them: M. Virginica, M. undulata, M. elongata. They seem to come and go in popularity and at the moment M. guttata seems to be in favour.

I'm not surprised as the colour is great and the leaves have good spotting.  There is a form called "spot" which have really big spots, but I have not seen it or sale in the UK.  This big plants came from a nursery earlier this year, I was a bit worried about the state of my little plant and wanted a spare. Expecting to find a small plant you can imagine how quickly this one jumped into my car on seeing it for the same price as all the little ones on the shelf.  I'm pleased to say my little plant which had been struggling for the last couple of years, has finally started to take off as well.

The other manfreda really strutting its stuff is manfreda undulata chocolate chips.

It is living up to both parts of its name: good spotting on the leaves and rocking the crinkle.

I'm hoping for flowers on both these plants next spring.  Unlike agaves they are not monocarpic so the flowers are not something to worry about.  It is the repeat flowering that make them an important feature to agave collectors as they hybridise with agave to produce X mangaves.  The most common being X mangave bloodspot which is thought to be Agave macroacantha hybrid x Manfreda maculosa.

My plant is only little and seems quite slow, but they are beautiful once established and well worth tracking down.

The other common one is the mangave macho mocha.  I'm still struggling to find the best conditions for this one, it hasn't liked being ignored, so will be getting a lot more attention from now on.

The colour on these tend to be really good, especially if given less water. The variegated form managave espresso seems just as temperamental for me.

Both forms are snail magnets, they love to take the top layer off the leaves. It is always the case that just as they are getting back to no damaged leaves new damage occurs.

Just recently there seems to be a lot more mangaves hitting the market in the US, sadly they have not reached the UK yet so it is more pot luck finding someone who has made their own hybrid and is happy to let you have a seedling or seed.  I managed to get two different hybrids from a friend, the first M. maculosa x A. obscura.

This plant has very triangular section leaves and good spotting.  It was one of the plants that I almost lost due to negligence last winter.  Strangely not because of cold, the reverse, it was so mild and having no water for such a long time in the green house almost killed it. Thankfully it is quite a strong grower and so has recovered and with a bit more care over this winter will be back to it's best next year.

The second is M. virginica X A obscura.  A more relaxed plant and initially I was not really taken with it, apart from the purple colour it was a bit too floppy for my liking.  Then this year it has really started to come into its own, the leaves have become more upright and the spotting has developed.

If it carries on with the same growth rate next year and the spotting continues to develop it will be a stand out plant. It is the joy with X mangaves you really don't know how they are going to turn out and a batch of seeds can give you a range of different forms.  Sadly Paul passed away two ago and so we'll never know how all the other seedlings turned out

Hopefully a lot more mangaves will become available in the UK soon, along with better availability of manfredas. 

British Cactus and Succulent Society national show

The good thing about having been busy over the summer is having a backlog of trips and other posts.  First up the BCSS national show, which  sadly is only once every four years.  Apart from a good plant buying opportunity it's a chance to meet up with like minded friends and to drool over some show plants.

I didn't take too many photos, but did manage to take some of my favourites.

This pachypodium densiflorum var brevicalyx is a good place to start, there is always one of the densiflorums at the showt.

What's not to like about these strange bulbous plants.  These and the euphorbias were probably the biggest groups in the show.

Euphorbia horrida

One of the stand out pots for me was an aloe I have been trying to grow, Aloe haworthioides x descoingsii.

There are always a few aloe erinaceas, usually single plants given how slow they are, so it was good to see this clump

Not a great photo but this haworthia nigra var diversifolia 'nana' was too good not to include.

I'm not sure about the "nana" aspect tot he name, I always associate that with a paler or yellow form. The plant above was the darkest colour I have seen in a succulent.

Then onto the echeverias. The plant that seemed popular this year was echeveria agavoides ebony.

It was good to see more echeverias this year, there were some nice plants. You can often see the progress of plants that were shown at the previous shows, the ebonys for instance were all much more established this time, although I think my main plant is still bigger than those at the show. One year I will have to actually put one of mine in.

Then the agaves.

This agave polianthiflora x victoriae-reginae hybrid was lovely; very neat and compact.

There were the usual suspects as well; agave utahensis var eborispina

My favourite agave this year was agave echinoides, rare to see them in shows and even more so at this size:

One thing that was noticeable was the amount of plants in nice pots. I have mentioned before that we seem to be behind the States in this respect, this year a lot of the plants were in nice pots. It transferred through to the staged pot section.  There seemed to be two thoughts, the fun side and the more sensible one:

Then to top it off a new UK potter was showing some of their pots. I first saw their plant and pot in the show, sadly I just couldn't get a good photo (a little ironic as I have since learnt that the potter is also a photographer). Anyway there were cards on another table with his website, so I was able to make contact.  His name is Mark Follon, you can see his website here.

By coincidence he posted a picture of this pot on facebook a few days later, so I was able to find out a bit more about his work. Needless to say having been through his site I have already selected a pot which he is kindly keeping for me while I decide if any others should end up with me as well.  Seeing the new pots he is putting out, I am guessing a few more will end up at mine in the future. Great to have someone else in the UK producing pots specifically for succulents.

After looking around the show tables, it was time to shop. I  was very restrained, but along with a few little things I did pick up this aloe polyphylla

It is already spiralling and I selected one that spirals in the other direction to my main plant.

I also picked up some aloe polyphylla seeds, there may be a major new project next year and I'm going to need a few of these.

As usual it was a great day, now just another 4 years until the next one.

Time for the tough choices.

You can relax, this is not another episode of "Live or Die" but instead an update on the last problem areas in the rockery.  I have been looking at this yucca purpurea since spring. It has been leaning more and more since being plants.

It now almost perfectly mirrors the yucca rostrata and  with winter around the corner it was decision time. I thought about moving it, replanting it there and cutting the main plant off.  In the end I went with the final option and top cut it.

Doesn't look as good at the moment, but they seem to grow quickly for me,  so in a year or so the two pups will be nice and big.  The main trunk will be dried for a few days then potted up.

We have had such mild winters since these have been planted they haven't really been tested.  The top should root quickly and then can be planted somewhere to go wild. Has anyone seen a really big clump of these?

Anyway the real benefit of cutting the main stem is that I can now use a simple cloche to cover that corner this winter.

It hasn't been covered before, but the aloe polyphylla is just too nice now and I should be able to rig the cloche into an L shape so it covers the aloe, the yuccas and the agave parryi.  I'll probably set it up as a test and then take it down until we have cold or snow forecast, hopefully not for a long time yet.