Category: Articles Revived

Many thanks for your recent e-mail searching for information on Hylotelephium.  This generic name was erected some years ago, in 1977 to be precise, by H. Ohba, with Sedum telephium  as the type.

Grandma died (rest her soul) and left this huge Jade behind with no instructions how to look after it. It was very healthy but now, after a year in my care, the plant looks very sick. There are brown spots on the leaves, the stems are falling over and the plant has never flowered.

By Ed Perfect, Kitchener, Ontario Welwitschia mirabilis  is a unique, tap-rooted plant from the Namib desert in the south-west of Africa. Because of its rarity and tap-rooted (non-clustering) nature, the only practical method of propagation is by seed. I have about ten years experience in growing this plant from seed. Some notes on my successes and failures are given below. Seeds:

Notocactus uebelmannianus  flowers at an early age.  In fact it flowered the first year and quickly outgrew the small two inch pot it came in.  I grow most of my cacti in a mixture of John Innes compost mixed with coarse grit and perlite in the ratio of one part grit, one part Perlite to three parts John Innes.

Those who often dismiss opuntias as nothing but prickly, uninteresting plants, might be overlooking some very interesting species not the least of which is Opuntia pachypus. This cactus was first described by Karl Schumann in 1904.