Avonia flowering (22 pics)

It's that time of the year again! No, not the cherry blossoms time. It's Avonia quinaria time!

But before we get to that, there's more Avonia news I'm probably even more excited about. This year, for the first time, I was able to catch the worm-like Avonias flowering, too. I was convinced they would never open their flowers under my growing conditions, producing seed pods out of flower buds directly. I don't know what happened but this year I could witness the actual flowers. Maybe I was not paying enough attention before (I thought I did!) or maybe this time the heat wave was bringing my windowsill closer to the growing conditions of a greenhouse. Or maybe now that I have more Avonia plants the chances of catching one blooming are higher. Also, while Avonia quinaria open their flowers around 6pm, other Avonias seem to open them around 2pm or 3pm, reducing my chances of seeing them further. Luckily I was on holidays :)

My old Avonia albissima ssp. multiramosa apparently has small, greenish flowers. Good to know. In all those years I'm seeing them for the first time.

This other Avonia albissima has rather large and showy flowers. The fact that the sun is shining on these flowers means they opened before 2pm. 

Avonia grisea (Av133). Very delicate.

Avonia papyracea. The round white petals look like scales. No wonder the flowers are difficult to spot. Especially if they are facing the light source and not the beholder.

Now to the quinarias. Their flowering is always an event! 

The two of the pink-flowering Avonia quinaria ssp. quinaria plants have flowered a while ago, of course not at the same time, that would be too nice of them. And even now I have one pink plant growing flowers. So much for synchronized flowering.

One of them is producing flower with different number of petals within the same flowering season. It's been doing that last year as well. But hey, I've had Avonia quinaria flowers with 4 petals before, too. The regular number is 5. 

I could still get some seeds out of them. While passive self-pollination is very unlikely, I find that brush-assisted self-pollination leads to seed pods more often than you'd think. I even have one seedling to show for it. It's not the only one that germinated but the only one left. I'm not that good at this yet. But seeds produced by selfing are definitely viable.

Speaking of abnormalities. I have this really strong and healthy white-flowering Avonia quinaria ssp. alstonii. It has grown all those branches and I was expecting it to flower nicely. Weeks go by - nothing happens, no buds. You see, normally, the buds would grow from the tips of the branches and then those branches would fall off. Just when I thought there will not be any white flowers this year, the plant started growing buds from its stem! Well, not  from the stem, but from the new and very short branches it grew just so that it can grow flowers. For some reason it wanted to keep all the long branches and that's kinda clever. Why grow long branches for flowers just to drop them off afterwards? That would be wasteful. Better to quickly grow something short instead. Well, it grew 11 flowers in the end and I got my white flowers after all.

And here's another strange thing - one flower opened completely without anthers.

I tried to take some artistic photos, with a proper background. Too bad I didn't have anything black :)

Cactus & Succulent Market in Essen 2017 (11 pics)

Yesterday I went to this year's Cactus & Succulent Market in Essen. No, "I went" sounds too casual. It was a 10 hour train ride, thanks to the terrible service of the Deutsche Bahn. In the end I could spend only 2 hours at the fair but it was SO worth it! Oh how I wished I could spend the whole day there... But hey, I arrived home within the same day, unlike last time, so that's good. 

Unfortunately I didn't have time to check it out in all detail. I spent most of my time chatting at the Mesemb stand. How wonderful it is to actually talk to someone about our hobby! If only I lived closer to places where other growers live or such events take place. I was so excited I was mostly mumbling or talking gibberish because I wanted to include so many topics into the conversation. And I loved every bit of it. Also, I realized, while always communicating in writing I often don't know how to actually pronounce names of people and plants properly. That was slightly embarrassing but exciting at the same time, just like everything else there.

I went out in the rain to try and take pictures of the rest of the fair which was not very productive. Please check out my 2014 and 2015 reports for better view on what is normally going on there.

So here is this wonderful place I am talking about.

Looking at the pictures, there are so many plants I would have liked to take home with me.

Not many conophytums. I think, I was too late. Still took 6 plants home.

The other stands were mostly for cacti.

This one was interesting but I didn't have time to check it out.

And here are my purchases. I'll post better pictures next time.

Discovered this little monster on one of the stands.

I also got one Ariocarpus, even though I don't grow cacti. Ariocarpus is one that visually fits very well with my collection, I thought, so I'll try growing it.

Aloinopsis malherbei fails to flower (3 pics)

Do you have any advise or explanation? I can't figure out what these guys are missing. They've been starting flowers, then drying them off and replacing them with leaves... And then start all over again. It's been going on for so long with both seedlings and my adult plant that I've come to see it as normal. Still, I'd really like to actually see the flowers develop and open someday. I water them well (no fertilizer since months though).

Three-leaf-schooneesii update

Just a little update on the Aloinopsis schooneesii seedling, now one year old, that grows in three leaf sets. This is the 4th set so far ;)

(Click to enlarge)

Little A. schooneesii monster

This little guy is doing some serious out-of-the-box thinking :D

"Wait... I didn't know I could do that. Let's try it again.. Ha! Nice!"

A. schooneesii seedlings 9 months old (2 pics)

Remember my Aloinopsis schooneesii seedlings? Sown in June 2013 they are now slowly getting too big for their pot. They more or less rested over the winter but recently started to grow new leaves one pair after another. Here is their well-deserved group picture. The big dark kid in the back looks especially fine :)

You might have been following the development of this little guy over on twitter. It's been growing triplet leaves for a while and I'm really curious whether the next leaf-set will be the same or it will return to normal. So cute!

Strange thing about Avonia

My Avonia quinaria ssp. alstonii continues to surprise. Now explain this to me. From what I read everywhere Avonia quinaria is the only Anacampseros species that is not self-fertile hence needs a genetically different partner to develop seeds. Today I noticed three out of its flowers, now dried up, were still attached to the plant. Normally they drop very soon after they close, just as the other flowers did. Since I normally remove old rests of flowers or old leaves from my plants I pulled on them and felt they weren't exactly soft. It turns out there are seed pods with seeds inside. And most of them have a nice viable size and shape. How did this happen? It was flowering all alone.

 I remember Bob Stewart warned me once that these girls are trouble XD

summer regeneration

Can someone tell me why some lithops can regenerate twice a year so perfectly, quickly and into a nice shape, while others can't even manage to change their leaves once without problems? 

These schwantesii are regenerating for the second time this year but at least it looks like they know what they are doing.

Avonia continues to flower

The flowers don't open all at once because they aren't all at the same stage of development. That's even better. This way you can enjoy the "flowering season" longer. Last night two more flowers opened and both had only 4 instead of 5 petals. I guess, if you're a tiny plant and you grew 10 big flowers you have to economize on something :)

Random Frithia news (2 pics)

Frithia pulchra flowers are comming up! Unfortunately it's the Frithia I bought a month ago, which is much less exciting than if my own Frithias would flower. They don't. But any flowers are worth looking forward to. The times will come when mine are all in bloom, too.

This is probably not really newsworthy but I find it interesting. I'm currently growing offsprings of a deceased Frithia humilis that had pretty weird looking leaves → click click. I was hoping they'd show something similar with time, that's why it was really nice to discover a tiny tentacle on one of their leaves. Hope to see more of this.

Greenie among the lesliei v. mariae

Just a little update. If you remember the little greenie that germinated among my lesliei v. mariae C141, it's still alive. I actually have two more pots of these but at this point only several plants look like v. mariae as I've imagined them to be. Which means all dotty like the one in the middle of the pic. Also, compared to the bromfieldii seedlings (2,5 years old as well), these leslilei are pretty small. Hoping for a growth spurt this season.

This just in

It's happening. Another Avonia quinaria ssp. alstonii flower is about to open. :) Will post pics as soon as it does~

It's a little unusual that the flower has developed out of the caudex/very short branch instead of a longer branch.

Never seen such a thing before!

My 5-headed helmutii monster has gotten huge this year and will get a strict diet this winter. BUT this post isn't about that. ;) Look on the second pic - the plant develops side shoots! They look a bit weird but they are there and they're growing. How is this possible? Lithops never fail to surprise :)

not wanting to grow up

This is one of the first plants, a lesliei of course, I've bought as adults and it had some growth issues from the start.
First it kept the short fissure for years. Then, last year, I've discovered it's getting two heads and thought "Finally something's happening." But as they came out they looked small and miserable, snuggling up to each other. Both heads had a half-fissure so that it looked like they're "sharing" it, clinging to their juvenile form. It wasn't until this year that it got over this stage.

Maybe it will even be ready for flowers in a couple of years. ;)