Random plant events: the stapeliads

Stapeliads¹ are just the best plants. Or, well, they fall just short of being the best plants, because they're difficult to grow from seed, and they're even more difficult to hybridize. But they're so weird, and so easy to grow, and, well, I was prepared to say "beautiful" but how about I just say "weird" again -- that you are almost certainly not growing as many of them as you should be.

I have five, at the moment, four of which have bloomed this fall. That's less impressive than it sounds, because Huernia schneideriana basically never stops blooming, and H. oculata only stops briefly, every few months, presumably to catch its breath. Here's H. schneideriana:

And H. oculata:

In previous years, I've seen blooms on Stapelia gigantea between September and December, but not this year. They look like this, when they happen, and are as stinky as they are enormous:

The two biggest surprises this year were Huernia zebrina and Stapelia variegata. Both have bloomed pretty prolifically for me when I've had them outside for the summer, but I never thought they could get enough light in the house to bloom spontaneously. I mean, I only got one bloom apiece, but still.

Huernia zebrina lives in a semi-obstructed west window:

And Stapelia variegata lives in a pretty wide-open east window:

Normally, stapeliad blooms have five-fold symmetry; I don't know what led the plant to produce a bloom with only four of everything.

I had a clue that the Stapelia variegata was blooming, but didn't realize it was a clue until too late: Sheba had started doing a lot of pointed sniffing in that part of the living room, which I'd noticed but not given a lot of thought to: it's not that unusual for her to sniff intensely around something for no obvious reason. I found the bloom when I went to water the plants in the living room. A single S. variegata bloom like this isn't particularly unpleasant, but when we had three flowers at once, over the kitchen sink, I was asked, kindly but firmly, to put the plant somewhere else.

All five stapeliads are pretty easy to grow. H. schneideriana is one of the easiest plants I have; H. oculata hasn't been here as long as the others, but has been easy so far. I have trouble getting enough light to S. variegata, which results in weak, etiolated new growth, which is sort of a problem. S. gigantea complains about being overwatered occasionally. H. zebrina is the problem child of the group, if any: the joints where new branches emerge tend to be weak, and are easily pulled apart. Often this happens without the stem noticeably changing position or location, so I usually don't notice that anything has happened until a stem starts turning yellow. Though this also makes it one of the easier ones to propagate, as I don't even need to intend to take a cutting a lot of the time: cuttings just happen.

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¹ The most commonly grown stapeliads are from the genera Stapelia, Huernia, and Orbea, and a few others are cultivated occasionally, or by specialists, like Caralluma, Edithcolea (which has amazing flowers), Whitesloanea, and Hoodia.
(This Hoodia is the same Hoodia as the hot new all-natural weight loss herbal supplement cactus hoodia you probably heard about a few years ago, when it was briefly a thing. We have since realized that no, Hoodia isn't a magical effortless the-pounds-just-melt-right-off pill either. But surely the next one will be. Or maybe the one after that. Or.)
The Stapeliae are a "tribe" within the subfamily Asclepiadoideae, in the family Apocynaceae. This makes them sort of close relatives to Ceropegia, Dischidia, and Hoya, and somewhat more distant relations to Nerium, Plumeria, Stephanotis, and Allamanda.

Random plant event: Huernia oculata, Plus an Outdoor Question

I realize that I just posted about Huernia oculata a month ago, and it wasn't that interesting then either, but not much is going on with the non-Anthurium plants lately. This is also the first bloom I've seen on this particular specimen of H. oculata, which presumably makes it at least a little newsworthy even if it isn't fully open yet.

On an unrelated note: when we first moved to this house, I had bought a bunch of plants from the ex-job. Planted most of them in containers, because we didn't have beds established yet (and, five years later, we still mostly don't, though we're working on it), and I remember being struck by one color combination in particular -- Geranium 'Rozanne' (blue-violet) and some unnamed red-orange Zinnia. (See the last picture on this post.)

I'm wanting to do something like that again somewhere, eventually, though maybe with something more of a true blue and true orange. Would anybody want to recommend some plants for me? Ideally, they would:

1) Be reseeding annuals (preferred) or slowly-spreading perennials, that
2) bloom at more or less the same time (ideally over a long period of time),
3) either aren't fussy as to soil type or could live together in the same soil type, whatever the ideal type might be,
4) could coexist for a reasonably long time without one crowding or shading the other out,
5) would survive a very windy, bright location in zone 5b.

The idea got re-sparked when I ran across the Annie's Annuals page for Nigella damascena 'Miss Jekyll Dark Blue'; I'm also possibly interested in thoughts on Lobelia erinus 'Monsoon', Eschscholzia californica, orange Tagetes patula cultivars, Zinnias, or whatever.

New plants

I have about six long, talky blog posts in progress at the moment, but I'm also going through one of those spells when I'm unhappy with everything I write, so it's maybe going to be a while before any of them get published. In the meantime, I've bought two more plants, that aren't even Anthuriums, so let's look at those.

First up is a Huernia.

Two reasons for this purchase: 1) stapeliads are the best,¹ and 2) it was $5.²

They had several specimens of this particular plant, one of which was flowering already. I didn't buy that one because there were aphids all over the flower. (Fortunately, there were several other specimens available.) I tried to get a flower photo anyway, but it didn't turn out well.

I'm a little hesitant about the ID; it was tagged as H. oculata, which has the most amazing flowers, but the flower doesn't match very well. In particular, that part at the center should be a lot lighter and more uniform in color. A little mottling is one thing, but that picture above is a lot more heavily patterned than I feel H. oculata ought to be.

I couldn't find any flower photos that matched any better, so it's possible that the one I took a picture of was immature, distorted by the aphids, or otherwise atypical, but in any case I'm not ready to say for certain that I have H. oculata. My plant has a few tiny flower buds on it, so we'll see what those look like.

I'll also keep an eye out for aphids. I had aphids on the Huernia zebrina last summer. They appear to be a common stapeliad problem.

The other plant I got at Reha's was Mangave 'Bloodspot.' This may or may not turn out to be a good idea; one of my two Mangave 'Macho Mocha' specimens lost a lot of leaves during the winter and is presently on the verge of death,³ and 'Macho Mocha' is, I think, the only Manfreda, Agave, or Mangave I have that hasn't had scale problems yet. So this is possibly a group of plants I should be more wary about. But you know how it is.

It was only $8, so if the purchase turns out to have been a bad idea, it was at least not a very bad idea. And I assume I'll get to enjoy it outside for a summer first.

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¹ Stapeliads are Stapelia, Huernia, Orbea, and related plants. Those three are the most common in cultivation, but there are a bunch of others. Especially notable among the others is Edithcolea grandis, which gets attempted a lot because the flowers are impressive, but it's apparently difficult to grow.
I say they're "the best" because a few of them do extremely well for me. Huernia schneideriana (which I got from Liza) and Stapelia gigantea are a couple of my favorite plants. H. schneideriana bloomed all winter long even though it wasn't receiving that much light; S. gigantea has all kinds of fun textures and smells and is one of the easiest plants I grow.
² Let's hear it for Reha's Greenhouses. They're also about $6 cheaper per bag than the ex-job on the brand of potting soil I like, which I wish I'd known before buying a bag at the ex-job.
³ The one that's doing poorly was about 8 inches from an obstructed west-facing window, and also probably stayed wetter longer because it was in a larger pot. The other one was on a south-facing windowsill, so it got a lot colder, but it also probably dried out faster and saw more sun.

Random plant events: Huernia schneideriana (?), Huernia zebrina, and Stapelia variegata

Originally, this post was just supposed to be about the Huernia schneideriana, because I saw that it had produced some buds on 18 July.

And they opened on 23 July, the first time I'd seen the flowers in-person, which was neat.

(This photo is actually from 27 July, but it's the same flower that opened on the 23rd. Should also note that the flower is actually very small: maybe 3/4 inch, or 2 cm, in diameter.)
But then two days after that, on the 25th, I happened to see that the Stapelia variegata had produced a flower without me even noticing the bud.

This flower is about 2 inches / 5 cm in diameter.
And two days after that, on 27 July, I saw that the Huernia zebrina had also produced a bunch of buds, one of which had fully opened by that afternoon.

Maybe 1 in / 2.5 cm in diameter.
So instead of a post about a single stapeliad flower, you get a post about three of them. And they cover a range of color patterns: solid, dots, stripes. So it's clearly a good thing that I couldn't write this post when I first thought of it.

As a side note: the flowering of the H. schneideriana means that all four of my stapeliads have now bloomed, so I can compare their smells. S. variegata is definitely, absolutely, no question about it, the worst-smelling. I haven't been able to smell anything, good or bad, from either of the Huernias, even checking multiple times over the course of a day. S. gigantea definitely has an unpleasant smell, but it's not so intense as to be particularly bothersome, if it's only one flower at a time. Putting the S. variegata next to the door we use all the time was a mistake, though.

Random plant event: Huernia zebrina

I got a Huernia zebrina earlier this summer. When it arrived, it had a flower bud on it, but it dropped the bud within a few days, presumably as a result of the travel. Disappointing, but not unexpected.


I noticed last week that there was a bud developing again, and on Sunday I saw it open for the first time. This isn't as open as it will get, but it's as open as it got on Sunday.


I didn't detect any smell, though I suppose that doesn't mean there wasn't one. Googling turned up a few claims of an "intensely fetid odor" and about the same number claiming no odor at all. I assume this means one of three things: either 1) odor varies from one specimen to the next, 2) odor varies according to the development of the plant, with some stages being less smelly than others, or 3) people are lazy, and will spout off about the odor of plants they've never actually grown or smelled. My personal guess, based on extensive direct observation of human beings and limited direct observation of Huernia zebrina, is that it's probably #3.

The color is not quite what I was expecting, either -- photos on-line are a lot more dramatically-colored than this. I'm assuming this is because the flower isn't fully developed yet (you can see in the above pictures that it hadn't yet opened all the way). There will be a follow-up post if I see a dramatic change in the appearance or smell.

New plant: Huernia zebrina

Still working on the Fittonia profile; I spent more time than anticipated watering yesterday, so it's mostly written but still a little rough. It'll be posted Sunday instead, I can almost promise. (UPDATE: It was.) Meanwhile, I want to show you this adorable little Huernia zebrina I got via trade last week:


Much of the adorableness is because it's in a tiny, tiny pot: each side is about 1 3/4 inches (4.4 cm).

The picture was taken immediately after it arrived on June 2; the flower bud has since withered, which is a shame, but not entirely unexpected. (I've had more than my share of Stapelia buds abort too, and the plant had just been through the postal system.) I assume I'll see a flower at some point regardless. Meanwhile you can check out this picture of someone else's flower, which is probably better than any photo I'll ever get anyway.

I haven't had a Huernia before; I was planning on treating it more or less like the Stapelia. If any readers have grown both and found their needs to be distinct, I'd appreciate a heads-up in the comments. (The person who sent it to me has only grown Huernia; I've only grown Stapelia. So neither of us have a good sense of how/whether they might differ.)

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As far as it goes, too, I still have plants available to sell or trade, if people are interested. A few things have been taken off the availability list (Salvia elegans, Carica papaya, Polyscias fruticosa 'Elegans'); a few things have been added to it (Peperomia obtusifolia variegata, Hoya carnosa).

I would still really, really like to give away the Anthurium podophyllum to someone with a tropical climate or greenhouse who'd pay the shipping cost -- one of you surely must fit that description. It's unhappy, granted, and unattractive, but I'm sure it would shape up if it was getting more warmth and light. Anybody?

Walkaways Part 7

I would just like to point out, for the record, that I'm really not-buying an awful lot of plants lately. I mean, considering the number of opportunities, I'm being very good.

(Possibly so good that I deserve a new plant, actually. Hmmmm. . . .)

First up, a bizarre Dracaena sanderiana.


It doesn't photograph well (the leaves are too narrow for the camera to focus on successfully), but that's the best I could do, sorry. I don't see anything attractive about this plant at all, and am kind of baffled that they're being sold. It's like somebody took the only even barely attractive thing about the species, the variegated leaves, and stretched them out until the variegation almost disappeared. I don't get it.

If they must be sold, surely we could at least pot seven or eight stems together in a single pot? One stem by itself just seems sad, guys.

Asiatica sells a variety which is either very similar to this, or which is precisely this, called Dracaena sanderiana 'Whiskers.'

The second one I might go back for at some point; I suspect it's a Huernia (maybe H. distincta?) but I'm not positive, so this is also a Question For The Hive Mind: can anybody identify this for sure as a Huernia, or, failing that, suggest another possibility? I'll go back and get it if it's a Huernia.


Finally, Syngonium podophyllum 'Pink Margarita.' I'm not a huge fan of Syngonium podophyllum. I want to like it, but Syngoniums either do badly for me, falling apart shortly after I get them and looking like crap within six months of purchase, or they do really well for me, growing like crazy and beginning to vine, which makes them look like crap within about six months of purchase.


But I'll admit: 'Pink Margarita' is kind of cool. I was tempted. If I thought it'd still look anything like this in August, I'd have been at least halfway to making a purchase.