Stapelianthus keraudreniae

Another species of Stapelianthus from Betioky district in south western Madagascar. This species is different from other Stapelianthus due to the raise annulus resembling some species of Huernia like H. zebrina. Also, the annulus appears to be viscid or sticky in the absence of dew.  During watering, I took care to avoid wetting the flowers. However, it is only strong enough to trap dirt as i did not see any dead ants or other insect stuck on it.  The flowers of Stapelianthus are quite diverse, tubular in S. decaryii , raise annulus in S. keraudreniae, recurved in S. insignis and open standard in S. hardyi, S. madagascariensis etc; more so than other genera of Stapeliaceae (Huernia, Stapelia).  I hope to find others like S. calcarophilus, S. madagascarensis.  Being a sub-tropical stapeliad, it adapts well under tropical conditions.

Stapelianthus pilosus

This is an immediately distinctive plant amongst the stapeliads - stem densely covered with white hairs. For those more familiar with huernia, it is like Huernia pillansii with denser and softer hairs. Originated from Madagascar, it has been in cultivation for a fair period of time. But it is not as commonly available as other S. African huernias.  It requires more warmth and a bit higher humidity.  It has a creeping habit due to its long soft stems.  Also because of longer stems and less offsetting habit, it is harder to take cuttings for propagation. Hopefully, i can keep and propagate it well under tropical conditions.

Echidnopsis bihendulensis

This is a very robust and easy stapeliad for the equatorial conditions.  It does not melt with days with night temperatures above 30°C. Not surprising as it is from Somalia. Purchased it from Ernest Specks as ES14143 2 years back.  It is very free flowering, need little attention and propagates easily too.

Other than American invasion of Somalia, Somali pirates threatening shipping in Red Sea area and other bad press... Somalia is actually a place very rich and diverse in succulents and xeric vegetation.  Ecologically dry for eons, it is an isolated succulent desert sharing common flora with Northern Africa and Canary Islands and across to the Arabian Peninsular. Other well known stapeliads - Pseudolithos, Pseudopectinaria, Whitesloanea, Edithcolea also comes that area. 

Nowadays, i try as much as possible grow succulents from equatorial africa where few succulents are to be found and the lowlands of sub-tropical africa mainly Somalia, Madasgacar. Other parts of 'tropical' africa is not really true, because they are way up above sea level most of East Africa is highland and plains above 1000 m.

Caralluma moniliformis

This is one of the Somalian carallumas that Ernest Specks had stocked in his 2008 catalogue. I was pleasantly surprised that it flowered earlier in February during the dry and windy weather. Most of my carallumas (C. retrospeciens) give a terminal ball of flowers, and i was expecting the same for this species.  It gives a long thin stick of spaced terminal inflorescence similar to a well known Indian species C. stalagmifera.  The flowers are really very small, perhaps 1 cm across and extremely delicate.  Any insects that can work on its pollination is probably an order of magnitude smaller!  For size, i have a stray kalanchoe longiflora (right) for comparison below:

Huernia hystrix

If my memory serve me well, this is one of the few succulents that i have from day 1. It is a plant have been around in Singapore for a very long time and yet rarely offered in nurseries.  Over the years, i have collected a couple of varieties, mainly Huernia hystrix v. hystrix but i like my original clone H. hystrix v. parvula best. Variety parvula is smaller compared to the type species in all its parts. And under my regime, it is also more free flowering compared to the various hystrix. For scale, the flower above is 3 cm across with similarly sized trailing stems. The type variety is widely distributed from south eastern Zimbabwee, through Mozambique to Transvaal, Swaziland and Natal provinces in South Africa, while parvula variety is restricted to few localities in Oribi Flats, Natal. It is one of the most resilient huernia in my collection, surviving neglect, under attrack by spider mites and weevils for longest period. They looked well enough that i overlooked those damned pests. 

Carallum crenulata

Have been awaiting buds to open for sometime.  There were numerous abortions in the last few months. Perhaps it is too windy or too warm.  At last on the 6th day of Chinese New Year, the flowers open:
My guess is Caralluma crenulata. It turns out to be correct. The stems are 4-angled and rather thin just 5-6 mm with small residual leaves. Unlike other stapeliads, it has a rather irregular habitat branching at will like a straggly Edithcolea grandis. So far it does not appear to form underground stolons/stems, noting the lack of new stem growth emerging from underground. A friend gave me a small plant that was purchased from the renown Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand. C. crenulata type is recorded from Sagaing in the dry savannah interior of Myanmar. I reckon it would be highly probable that some plant finds its way to the neighbouring Thailand which has a very developed horticultural industry.  

Hoya endauensis

Hoya species has been climbing about on my wall together with some of my native miniature orchids.  The leaves are small and long shoots or vines are also more contained. This clone has entirely smooth leaf margin versus wavy leaf margins in clones available in US and European collection.  It retains the same characteristics under different growers. The compactness and smallness is the main reason that i kept it. I have given cuttings to a couple of friends and also send long climbing shoots to the bin but it has never flowered over 3 or 4 years.  When it did 2 weeks ago, it lasted less than 2 days. The umbel naturally faces the ground.  I had to "right" it up to avoid using the bright sky as backdrop.  Each flower is just 8 mm across.. small.  

There is some debate as to it's origins; i recollected it was picked up on a fallen/rotting twig on a road up to a radio/tv broadcasting station between Kahang-Jemaluang road in Johor, Malaysia while my friend insisted it was picked up in the Panti area.  Well, it probably does not matter, the 2 localities are just 80 km or so apart in Johor State sharing a common lowland rainforest habitat.

Huernia kennedyana

Was very pleasantly surprised this morning when i saw my small Huernia kennedyana in flower. I had to photograph it before before the rain clouds blocked out the nice morning sun! Didn't even got a chance to preview my snaps as i had to rush to work. This is a very distinctive Huernia. The stems are very short and almost globular. For scale, the plant is in a 2" pot. It will surely take a while before it matt-over the square pot. First described by John Lavranos and is found around Cradock area, East Cape, South Africa.

Caralluma hexagona

This very small dainty stapeliad was purchased from the famous Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand. It is a strongly branching plant with forms a small mound or mat over time. I was trying to put an identification to it for some time. At first i thought it was C. greenbergiana then C. foulcheri-delboscii and also possibly C. shadhbana or it could be C. hexagona as well. Yes, i was nearly right. The taxonomist as least according to the chapter Caralluma by B. Muller & Albers in Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants - Asclepiadaceae has reduced all the difficult to spell species epithets to something easy to remember C. hexagona. Let's keep our fingers crossed... you never know when somebody might do some splits or revisions or unearth some earlier published species name than will take precedence according to International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

This is widely distributed species from the Arabian peninsular (Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman). Since it is probably more adaptable given its habitat range that may explain why my clone is heat tolerant. A general rule of thumb is to propagate it during the vegetative phase; it can sometimes collapse without a good reason, remnant branches can prove difficult to root.

Orbea dummeri

On my second attempt keeping O. dummeri, it rewards me with strickingly beautiful flowers. Perhaps it is a more heat tolerant clone after going through a rot or thrive selection process over Southern Taiwan's hot 36 C summers. According to Monograph of Orbea and Ballyanthus by P. V. Bruyns in Systematic Botany Monographs Vol.63, it is a species higher and drier parts of Kenya, and other neighbouring countries of the Rift Valley occuring from 950 - 1600m. The plant in my first failed attempt came from chiller greenhouse of the West, and it quickly perished.

Over the last couple of years, i come to realized that stapeliads are not so difficult to keep if they can tolerate heat in the high 30Cs. Should they look limp and a bit desiccated after their peak growth or flowering season... let them be. They just need a dry rest with a bit of water just to keep them from unrecoverable desiccation. During this period, look out signs of deadly pest like spider mites. Spider mites can easily reduced plants to sad resting state look! When new growth starts, water & fertilize. And if it is a tempermental species take cuttings and keep an extra pot!

Caralluma speciosa

This is one of the very old succulents that i managed to keep alive. Got it "once-upon-a-time" from Out-of-Africa Plants when general succulent prices were much lower. That was before the US housing bubble, when oil prices are in the low twenties, the price of Caralluma somalica in the catalogue was probably at ~$8 and US oversea postage was relatively low and then surface mail option was still available. It wanted to flower couple of times over the past years but the buds aborted. The La Nina cooling effect of 2007 has triggered it to flower over Nov'07-Feb'08 period.

It did not turned out to be C. somalica as labelled but C. speciosa. The perfectly symmetrical ball of inflorescence about 10 cm across is very impressive. Well, the foetid rotten flesh odor will get your attention within a couple of meters. The smell attracts big carrion flies. It took me many tries to get a decent picture - the corona has bright luminescent quality and contrast poorly with the yellow corolla tube; either the corona is overexposed or the dark maroon corolla lobes are underexposed.

This is one of the big clumping Caralluma found in tropical East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda & Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, probably also in Djibouti or Eritrea) on dry rocky savanna or semi-desert lowland habitat. C. speciosa and other like C. adenensis, C. somalica, C. acutangula (C. retrospiciens) and C. edithae are similar species that can be "grouped" together. Now, am awaiting another big clumping Caralluma sp. purchased from Bangkok to flower.

Hoya imbricata

Hoya imbricata is endemic to The Philippines. It is found on tree trunks at low to medium altitudes in Bontoc, Rizal, and Laguna Provinces in Luzon and in Busuanga. A thin wiry stem climbs up bare trunk and bears convex disc-shaped leaves up to 12 cm across. If the leaves cannot find a flat surface to wrap around, it will form a half-pouch. In cultivation with limited slab climbing for the growing plant, this takes away the full beauty of this Hoya. Some forms are more attractive with contrasting marble on intense reddish-purple leaves. Ants can take shelter under the leaves or in the pouch. It parallels its cousin Dischida cochleata in its myrmecophytic habit.

The flowers are borne on leafless stems; velvety, and creamy-white 8 to 10 millimeters in diameter. The umbel is geotropic (facing down) and that makes it challenging to photograph. See if you can spot the copper wire that was use to right it up to face the light. This was a 2-leaf cutting gift that my friend brought back from the famous Bangkok's Chatuchak Market. Back then, it was a rare hoya.

Hoya caudata

This is an endemic hoya to the peninsula: Malaysia and Southern Thailand. It is a fairly common species throughout the peninsula in lowland forest. The flowers are borned on a geotropic (pointing downward in direction of gravity) concave umbel. So it is unavoidable that we always get a backlitted bunch of flowers; it is pretty isn't it (above). The leaves are very succulent and thick, with very strong undulating and rough margins... and the marbled or lichen/mold/fungus-like irregular patch of white makes it very attractive. The leaves (below) are around 15 cm long.

A Rare Dischidia cochleata

This is a very beautiful ant associated Dischidia species is described by Blume with Type specimen from Java. In The Peninsular Malayan species of Dischidia by R. E. Rintz, it has been recorded from lowland and hill forest of southern 2/3 of the Peninsula; seen once in Selangor; Reported from Malacca, Pahang and Singapore. This species is an "intermediate" ant-plant, with round-convex leaves clasping branches and twigs. Intermediate ant plant in the sense that it does not have well develop ant-housing pouch structure as D. major a native or D. pectinoides from The Philippines but possesses just simple convex-shelter for ants or other insects while many other species like D. nummularia does provide any ant shelter at all.

We were very fortunate to chance upon it on a fallen branch in a recreation stream/waterfall area in Southern Johor. The area has since been destroyed by a flash flood about 2 years ago. This specimen has exceptionally bright red flowers and capped bluish-white lobes; the leaves are covered with small random conical projections, giving it a rough and bumpy texture. So far, this is one of the most best clone ever found; more red versus orange and more textured leaves. It does reasonably well for me, enjoying intense light...some light fertilizing and grown on a stick. This clone has been introduced to a couple of friends in Thailand, Taiwan, Europe and US... but for most is challanging to difficult.

A Hoya?

This is another shy to flower vine. It took a me long time for me to identify it. This leafless green vine is not a hoya, a dischidia or a cynanchum. I first saw it twining over scrub on limestone cliffs at Raleigh beach, Krabi. The impression then was dodder (Cuscuta sp), a parasitic vine commonly found on mangrove and coastal vegetation. But it is too green and has a milky sap, and that helps me to narrow down to milk-weed family (Asclepiadaceae). Again i found it in Halong Bay, Vietnam... twining over Euphorbia antiquorum and other Dracaena. With luck it was in flower and i'm now able to narrow it down to Sarcostemma brevistigma. Unlike Hoya and dischidia, it would never really find a place in collections for lack of flowers and its vining habit. Well it is bless with robustness and a very wide distribution range from India, Nepal, Myanmar and all the way to Thailand, Vietnam and Southern China and is unlikely to face extinction.