C and D's Succulents

[C And D]

I don't worry about them going down to 40 degrees, as along as it warms up during the day.
I the plants start getting too dehydrated and shriveled in the Winter, I give them a good watering, then keep them inside until they are dry.

As far as sand goes, I use coarse sand, size 6 to 12, it really breaks up the soil for more sensitive plants.
I avoid smaller sand, since it acts like silt.

The flowering arms on the old Pseudolithos grow like crazy appendages every which way,
you would think that if you cut one off you could easily root it, well I wasn't able so gave up on it, maybe someone can have better luck with it.

[C And D]

I'm going to show off some of the exciting surprises that I got when I bought out Bill Hagblom's collection.
Bill was one of the top growers in Southern California from the 1990s to 2008ish.
He had MANY plants shown off in the Superb Succulents Photo Gallery in the CSSA journel.
And he won many prizes at various shows.
He changed what he grew over the years, from Cacti to Adeniums, then Adromischus then to Bulbs and Conophytums.
Most of his Cactus collection was gone by 2010, and he had pretty much given up on everything by 2012, mostly due to poor health.

He also changed his growing style, and was a big proponant of coir and perlite for a soil mix for about 10 years, which I hated.
But for his Conophytums, he grew them in a mix of beach sand and dirt, which worked for him.

I had to transplant all of his stuff into my soil, which took quite a while, and some I just kept in his soil until this fall so I could figure out what they were. Since most of the plants were winter growers, they were already dormant when I got them, and would not wake for another 5 -6 months.
There were flats of bulbs, all without leaves or tags.

He had one flat with the name Ornithogalum concordiana, and one flat with the name Albuca "Silver Hill".
Of course I thought they were different plants, and when you look up Albuca "Silver Hill" there is no species, Silver Hill is just where he got the seeds.
Well I grew them apart, and when they all sprouted new leaves, here was no difference between the plants, they are all Albuca concordiana

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[C And D]

More history on the Bill Hagblom plants which we got in April 2014.

Like I said before, he had given up on growing his plants because of health, and they got little water from 2013 on.
The plants outside that got rain (which was very little during the winter of 2013-2014) were in the best shape, that included all the bulbs, Adromischus, and Tylecodons
He kept the Conos inside a makeshift greenhouse, so they got zero water.

There were about 50 flats of dead conos, and another 50 flats for half dead and half alive conos.
I was able to whittle down the living stuff to 8 flats, and after replanting it is now 4 flats.

Most of Conos that were still alive, I gave them some nice drinks when I got them, then put them asleep until a couple weeks ago, and 90% are coming back nicely.

Here are a couple sweet new ones for me
Conophytum acutum

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Conophytum tantillum heleneae

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[C And D]

A big pile of Conophytum minutum v. nudum

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Lot's of C. ratum

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And some C. angelicae ssp. tetragonum got mixed up with the many clumps of C. cubicum

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[fenestrane]

What an awesome bunch of plants. Please, keep us updated on the story Craig. Have you got any photos of the other plants?

[Jo]

Thanks for the pics. Super-plump ratums.

[Aiko]

Here is my Pseudolithos cubiforme yesterday, with it's green bronzed fly trying to get to that stench

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That's one nice ugly plant. Meant as a compliment!

[C And D]

I will post some more Conos in a couple weeks, when some more of the rare ones look their best.

The real Score from the Bill Hagblom collection were the Tylecodons.

Getting back to the story, me and Denise bought about 10 flats from Bill in April 2013, and that included some Tylecodons
One was a T. paniculata v. dinteri that was about 3 feet high, 6 inches at the base, and about 50 lbs. We paid $75.

Last April, we were getting low on some sale plants, so we called him up to see what he had left. That's when he told us that most of it has to go.
So we went there and saw that he hadn't watered since we were there a year ago, and things looked pretty bad.
So we bought a bunch of stuff that filled our truck at super low prices.

A couple days later, me and Denise think, we have to go back right away and get every last good plant before it's too late!
So we call them and ask to come over again, and they say OK, but we just sold almost everything to some other vendor, so you can have what's left.
Well we kicked ourselves for not buying everything the first time, You only get one chance sometimes.

But it turned out OK for us, the other vender was not interested in the Tylecodons, bulbs or Conophtyums, and the prices were lower this time around, since it was either going in my truck, or in the dumpster.
So we bought every last Tylecodon including one T. paniculata that was about 3 feet high, 6 inches at the base, and about 50 lbs.
Then we went through every flat of Conos and saved the living ones, and we took every flat of bulbs, which had no leaves and few labels.

[C And D]

The bulbs were a crazy lot.
It looks like he had transplanted them a couple years ago into his coir soil, with one bulb per pot.
The coir soil is great if you can control the watering precisely, which is hard to do if you don't monitor your plants closely.
There were 2 full flats of 100% dead Phyllobolus tenuifloris.

There were a lot of big pots of various Albuca species
The Albuca spiralis were well labeled, so we unpotted them to see what the bulbs looked like under the soil, and they were Huge!, like 3 inches.
We put them up for sale and they went fast, so we had to take them off the list before we ran out of mother plants.

There were bunchs of unknown bulbs, we put "?" labels on them and waited.
It looks like there are 2 Boophane disticha that came with the lot.

But the biggest surprise was this
Othonna cakilefolia

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What a wierd plant, I will post pics of the flower, which looks like will be open next week.
It was just a naked bulb 2 weeks ago, the greenery grows Fast

Here it is on Oct. 20

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I buried the bulb with sand, no reason to stress it out.

[Jo]

Thanks for posting this very special Othonna!
Unlike the others in the genus, this one should have purple flowers.
We'll see....

[C And D]

Thanks Jo, I had no idea about the flower color
I never heard of the plant until I looked it up on google.

I'm excited to see what it does.
I do know it goes all the way dormant in summer, and looses all it's leaves.

[C And D]

Bill Hagblom loved his Tylecodons, and they grew well in his coir mix, seldom needing water, out in the rain his T. paniculatas would bulk up into huge monsters. Most of the other were in small pots, so were a bit stifled.

His one favorite plant was a Tylecodon noltei that he got it from Steven Hammer about 8 years ago, and he would show it to me everytime.
I got one from Steven Hammer at the same time, so his was from the same seed batch and were about the same size. He wouldn't sell it no matter what, though I didn't need it since I have 3 already.

Here are some of the new ones:

This one was labeled Tylecodon sp.
I asked Steven Hammer if he knew what it was and he confirmed that it was T. torulosus.
It was in bad shape when we got it, the arms were falling off, and the trunk was collasping from dehydration.
We repotted it and it took on water quickly, now it's fat and happy!

Tylecodon torulous

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Here is a rooted cutting with flower bud, the flowers are white

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[C And D]

I lost the tag to this Tylecodon
but had suspiscions that it was a true Tylecodon ventricosus
Steven Hammer confirmed the ID.

It was in bad shape as well
These are it first leaves. I will post more photos when it leafs out fully.

Tylecodon ventricosus

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[C And D]

Here are 2 other rare Tylecodons that I got from him on previous visits

Tylecodon ellaphieae

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Tylecodon bodleyae

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And we got several big T. reticulatus

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[C And D]

I already posted photos of this plant, but it was one of the big exciting surprizes for me.

Ornithogalum britteniae
There was a small write up on this plant in the CSSA journel about 8 years back, and it said that they gave Steven Hammer plants to cultivate.
I asked Steven a couple years ago if he had any luck getting plants for sale and he said no.

I'm not sure where Bill got his plant(s), but they are the real thing.
When I got the plant, it was 2 bulbs growing together, so I thought it's just one plant that divided.

On a lark, on tried cross pollinating them when they were in flower. And Lo and behold, the flower swelled and produced seed.
I crossed the rest of them and got 100 seeds, and the seed batch in the seed box are sprouting like crazy.

after 8 months of C and D plant care, it's now throwing out side shoots like crazy

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Photo from September 20



Here it is on Oct 20

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