Eutow Introe . =^_^= Plants new in -->

[Eutow_Intermedium]

Went to the usual place several days go , and even tho I am convinced my collection is pretty much topping out. I saw this handsome larger plant and just had to reel it in.

The plant looks very familiar. There was two there, and the other one didn't have the red in the spines, it was just yellow . This also resulted in yet another mandel pot.

I was thinking Ferocactus or even Thelocctus, but I may still be way off.



Anybody got any idea's ?

=^-^=

Regds

Eutow_Int*

[Eutow_Intermedium]

Returned to Capital Cardens today. And pretty much the plant selection there is the same before it was when all the new plants came in the day I was there last. Only some various Mammilaria's and echinopsis Rose Quasrtz got sucked into the unwanted residents category.

Two Melocactus Amoenus still remain after ALL this time. And two new, nice big Echinocactus Grusonnii.

I have had my eye on this plant for some time now. and people just have no idea what it is. But I finally gave into temptation and took on the Mammilaria Charlie Glassii

=^-^=

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I took a look at the smaller M. Glassii that I won at a BCSS Bromley branch raffle, and after almost popping my eyes out of my head from trying so hard to see what was wrong with it. I noticed Red Spider. So that plant has now gone outside for some fresh air and weathering.

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So here's the new plant of M. Glassii



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and a tiny broken victorian bottle that I filled with soil and am trying to establish a little clump of Sedum Dasyphyllum. Seing as my glazed butler sink went missing when we had workmen round.

[Eutow_Intermedium]

Ok so I was at the May meeting and lecture of the BCSS Bromley branch Wednesday gone.

Our lecturer for the night was none other than Mr Derek Tribble and he done a talk on Crassula's. Possibly the most advanced talk to date since I have returned to the BCSS meeting scene. It was a bit of a struggle in the beginning. Similar to a song you hear on the radio the first time. If you were to experience it again , you would probably understand it a little better. This probably goes the same for some movie's and films.

Can we do it again ?

I did say that I had topped out my collection. But then we all say that don't we, and somehow we manage to squueze in just a few more plants.

Unusualy enough being a night on Succulents I made it my ambition to purchase at least 1 succulent plant if there had been any on sale. We had arrived just as everyone had sat down and the lecture was about to start. My girlfriend spent 20mins trying to attach the pannier bags to the back of the new Hercules Stratos's pannier rack. It took her twenty minutes, before I started fume. I then despite my large arthritic hands , had to do it myself. We didn't have the time to get and food on the way as a result.

When the raffle came , as happened in the case of the Steel Horse bikers get together at a local pub , my ticket came out first . I had only just that minute started to browse over the plants. This was obviously the result of John Pilbeam not shaking the tickets up after putting the Girlfriends and my tickets in. Although Kim's ticket did come out towards the end.

So I had to just make a quick selection there and then . So I picked up a good sized plant Mammilaria Microthele that was branching up top. On closer inspection it looked to be desperate for drink of water. Having a Red spot on the top, this plant is one of Mr Pilbeam's plants that would have come from Kent & Conniseurr's
cacti.

I also had good hard sniff bout the succulents and picked out a few of them , as well as a lonely Matucana plant.

so here are the newest additions, including a rarity for me , succulent plants.



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I repotted the Mammilaria Microthele when I got back , as well as the Matucana and the little Aloe

John Pilbeam

Mammilaria Microthele

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Derek Tribble

Matucana Pujupatii

Aloe ' pepe ' Descoingsii x haworthiodes

Adromischus Umbraticola ssp. Ramosa, Blouberg EUJ 11239 . Type locality data

& Gasteria Dooreniae, swart Waterspoort . Type locality data

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Enjoy . . . .

Eutow_Int*

[Eutow_Intermedium]

=^~^=

Oh yes and I forgot to declare these two from a week or so ago.

From the local GC . A plant that was named Chrysacantha . I very well know what P. Chrysacanthion looks like , it has longer , more yellow spines than this , so I am a bit dubious.

Also a second Echinopsis ( Tufty ) Subdenudata



My plan is to hopefully have both the plants flower at the same time , and I might be able to get some seed. The other E. Subdenudata ( Tufty ) was bought at IKEA last year and is in the Custom mandel pot with Sub in Graffiti style on it. It's seen a bit of extra growth which is good and unlike the rest of my Echinopsis , it has made an effort to flower . The larger of the two has three Brown/grey " tufty " buds on it .

[ R ] [ E ] [ S ] [ U ] [ L ] [ T ]

Shame the Schick hybrids are doing nowt

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I have a back up cactus though. The original Echinopsis Oxygona at Nash's Garden has two buds on it and various emerging buds , that could be the second flush. I have been feeding the cacti in the Conservatory at Nash's Garden a diluted Tomato and Seaweed feed. The plants there seem to like it , and it certainly brought her Gymnocalycium Horsti back from the brink , and her Gymno Baldianum is looking pretty pumped with various flowers on it.

[Eutow_Intermedium]

On the 25th of June I payed visit to Kent and Connoisseurs Cacti . The nurseries of John Pilbeam and Doug Sizmur again. On arrival it was decided by Mr pilbeam that there would not be normal plant sales that day , and that there would just be the Silent Auction only , to remove the plants from a late collector from the greenhouses there.

This as you can imagine upset quite a lot of people , especially me. As I am not a Driver and I cant carry oversized plants in the front carrier basket of an Ex Post Office bicycle. And whatever boils me , my girlfriend will join and make it twice as bad

Early on I took a look around at the plants and out of all the plants only two took my fancy. And I thank myself there were just two, otherwise I would have left that day with absolutely nothing. And if that had happened I would have been absolutely fuming.

Luckily by the end of the day, nobody else had outbidded me on the two plants. One of which I had written down in my book as a plant I had wanted to look out for on the day.

So I managed to get hold of a Large Thelocactus Rinconensis for £4.00 and a second plant I had seen shortly after , a larger plant of Thelocactus Hexaedrophorus . Of which I also managed to acquire for £4.00 . Which is one hell of a big < < SPLAT > > indeed

Which means these plants were not much more in price than the four Thelo's that I got from Paul Hoxey a couple of years back.



By the end of the Fish and Chip supper the atmosphere had calmed down slightly , and up to twelve plants were dragged out of the Greenhouse. Either because they had been shown a lot of interest and they wanted to bump the bids up even more. Or they had big plants that they hadn't seen and bid on , plants that they thought were worth more than the current bids that were done during the silent auction.

Pretty soon it ended up like Storage Wars and people were pushing up the bids and laughing it off . And I must have shouted Yuuup a couple of times. Eventualy the oversize Golden Barrel went for £20 . And I think an extra large Gymnocalycium Saglione went for £30. Considering the size of some of these plants , I think they still went for a reasonable if not cheap price.

But Mr Pilbeam got stuck with the extra large Euphorbia Horrida

A plant that he joked that he thought that he did have the room for in the greenhouses at the end of the evening.

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Towards the end John turned to me and said " Now that it's a bit quieter , is there something you want here " ? Or in them lines . I really didn't think I would get this opportunity , and was quite taken aback , and it began to sink in how selfish I suddenly felt I had become at that moment . But the Girlfriend and I ha frankly along with others given him a lot of hassle during the event.

I said that I didn't really want to pick up too much this time round and went strait for the Echinopsis hybrids and quickly picked out three, along with a couple of other plants .

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The girlfriend came way with a big tub full of two Lithops plant for £2.00 after the Silent Auction . One of which was clearly very old , the other was too but was a nicer and bigger twin.

Unfortunately by the time she had gotten home , the older of the two plants had all but fallen to pieces. Leaving just the nicer one. But that wasn't bad for £2.00



Plants that I managed to very quickly scramble at the end being

Echinopsis Cassandra
Echinopsis Madam Pele
Echinopsis Pooka
Astrophytum Asterias Hybrid
and
Neoporteria Esmereldana

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Naturaly by the time I got back to my flat . I felt like concentrated farmyard Manure and really bad for how I had Treated and hassled John during the evening. But in all honesty you cant change plans like that, it's not on . I understand he is getting on and earlier in the evening he had said that he should have retired 25 years ago , and today he had been pronouncedly hobbling around , supposedly with a hip that he had said while in the distance , that wasn't getting any worse , but wasn't getting any better either.

Poor man . I do respect the man massively , he is one of the biggest names in the world of Cacti . Rather like Dowt DFN is in the South london Graffiti scene for me . . BIG ! I think at a later date I need to apologise to him for the the trouble I had caused him that evening.

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Also I know where to go later to get an Echinocatus Horizonthalonius , as they had some on sale there .

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Now if they had only had the Auction of the late growers plants on the night of a BCSS Bromley AGM meeting night. It would have been so much easier. =^~^=

[CactusFanDan]

Those are nice new Thelocacti and the others are quite nice too. Sounds like a fun day. That E. esmeraldana doesn't look too convincing to me, looks more like E. taltalensis ssp. paucicostata, but flowers or a closeup would help to confirm that.

[Eutow_Intermedium]

The neoporteria Esmereldana is slightly damaged. I'm hoping it grows out of this eventually.

Will have to keep an eye on that one.

But to be honest it doe'snt look like my Neoporteria, ( Eriosyce ) Paucicosta plants , this ones too brown and the aspiration different.

I'm not so familiar with Taltalensis

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Yes I am quite happy with the two large Thelo's. It will be way to long before those Echinopsis finaly flower =^~^=

Here's to waiting

[CactusFanDan]

The neoporteria Esmereldana id slightly damaged. I'm hoping it grows out of this eventually.

Will have to keep an eye on that one.

But to be honest it doe'snt look like my Neoporteria, ( Eriosyce ) Paucicosta plants , this ones too brown and the aspiration different.

I'm not so familiar with Taltalensis

I can tell them apart a yard away (with my glasses on). paucicostatas come in a variety of shades: purple, apple green, glaucous icy blue, brown and other colours in between. Colour is dependent on heritage and growing conditions.

Now, the first thing which makes me think it's not esmeraldana is the size. A poor indicator, I know, but E. esmeraldana is a miniature species and generally doesn't get very big at all. However, if that is esmeraldana, that is way bigger than flowering size, so it should be willing to flower right now if it's happy enough.

E. t. paucicostata has quite deeply set aeroles in the tubercles too, which can be a useful characteristic. With age, the aeroles produce more wool and it makes them appear as though the aerole sits atop the tubercle. Tubercle structure is different between the two species as well.

[Eutow_Intermedium]

Went to the usual a couple of days ago an finally managed to copp myself plant of Parodia Haselbergii
Also several other plants that I more have likely have already got.

These were in a pack of three including the P. Haselbergii.

And I got a dump of four of the same , interesting mammilaria plants , of which I later potted up all the plants in the Allotment greenhouse. Will need to get an I.D on that Mamm at some point. There was also another Mammilaria, it looks to be M. Prolifera , possibly Prolifera haitiensis . I've taken the bigger clump that flowered so profusely earlier this year back to the greenhouse . I now have the smaller one here in the gaff.

=^-^=

[Eutow_Intermedium]

On wednesday night I went to the BCSS ( Bromley ) branch for their monthly lecture.

There was a talk about Terrific turbinicarpus by Graham Evans

Although I didn't come back with a Turb. I did come back with a couple of Raffle won plants . Those being a plant of Echinocereus X Rotteri and Graptopetalum Superbum, of which I don't have pics of as of yet.

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However I do have a picture of and yes ever the hypocrite , another new Thelocatus . This plant being Thelocactus Conothelos ssp Argenteus.

The plant on the right is my original plant of Thelocactus Rinconenis SB 301 that has done absolutely nothing for years. i'm hoping things will change soon for this plant.

[Eutow_Intermedium]

Ok it's been a while since I posted much.

Last Wed's gone I went to my local branch of the BCSS ( bromley branch ) and secured a small group of plants.

Paul Hoxey was doing a Lecture and slides on His 2009 trip to Mexico.

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This is the raffle prize I picked . I went over the plants available but couldn't really decide ahead, what plant I fancied. So when my number was called I just went for something on impulse. What resulted was me going for a plant that I don't really know all that much about , even less the Genus, as I haven't kept them before.

Oroya Neoperuviana



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On the night Paul Hoxey also had a selection of plants available for sale. If you remember correctly , the l;sat time round he was selling of large plants of Thelocacti. So I bought a small group of them and a Matucana Haynei Hystrix , and a leo a small Mammilaria in the raffle that time.

On this occasion he was clearing out surplus plants of Turbinicarpus. Shame we never had these plants the month before , when Graham Evans done his talk.

Frankly my eyes popped out at the sight of all these lovelies , and a larger size too , and going for a reasonable price too.

( 1 ) Turbinicarpus Schwarzii Rubriflorus



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( 2 ) Turbinicarpus Flaviflorus Lau 1185



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( 3 ) Turbinicarpus Lophophoroides

I have always struggled over the years and probably always will do, trying to grow Lophophoira Williamsii . They are too slow growing and susceptible to rotting.

So I thought I would give the famous Turbinicapus Lophophoroides a go instead.



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( 4 ) Turbinicarpus Vierckii CDS 52

One last large Turb to bolster up that part of the collection and that corner of the greenhouse . Nice larger plants , and hopefully at this age they will be less likely to randomly turn their toes up at me.

This one is in need of a new abode as it is more than potbound . The heads have completely covered the pot completely



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And this plant was in a small bidding auction that evening. Older plants from the collection of a late cactus collector that John Pilbeam had taken on to sell on later.

I had put a bit on a plant of Astrophyum Onzuka . But that had soon run away. Then a second cactus did the same , but I didn't bid on that one.

Then the last plant came up and I half jokingly put a £5 in . I grizzled momentarily as there were no other bids , and then seconds later it was mine

So I then became the owner of a pretty large Astrophytum hybrid plant.

Probably a Cross between A. Myriostigma and A. Ornatum

*rolls eyes*

But then I hair said earlier in the year that I did want to get hold of a larger pliant of Astrophytum. So I guess this is my plant



I have given this plant a good water , as I have all the other plants. The Turbs especially looked a bit thirsty , and the T. Viereckii went up like a balloon.

Think I am waking to my Hyrid astro now anyway .

=^-^=

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Enjoy . . . .

Eutow_Int*