And so on...

 Continuing with my observations...Last year, I accidentally ordered two H. EPC 1015, which is a cross between lambii and vitellina.  So I put them together in a 6" clay pot this morning.  I have a feeling it's going to be a heavy one and I hope it will be heavy enough, but I do worry a bit about being able to keep it watered enough as clay dries out faster.  I'll put it in a high profile place where I will be seeing it every day.  There's a tiny vine emerging from the soil in the plant in the front.  And apparently, I cut one of them last summer because one of the little pots had two starter plants.  I suppose it's possible it came that way, but it seems no one but me will do more than one cutting per pot...

I'd love to get my hands on a true lambii, and I did have one way back about 20 years ago.  It's an expensive and hard to come by species.  I think I got mine (a cutting) from Ted Green.  

I also repotted the new Dr. IBOK from CO Kathy this morning.  I decided it needed a hanging pot.  Wow, this one is a beauty with it's highly textured and largish leaves!  It's got a nice vigorous vine started with baby leaves - YAY!
 

 

H. vanuatuensis:  It looked pretty rough last year, so at the end of the summer, I repotted it into a smaller pot.  It was in a 8 or 10" EA pot because at one time, it was big.  But about half of it had died back - it was two plants and one was completely dead.  So I took the remaining one and put it in one of the small 4.5" hanging pots.  Well, here it is spring and it looks like its old self!  YAY! Today, I took two cuttings to root and put back in with the mother plant in hopes of getting it more balanced as it all comes out of one side of the pot.  But it definitely looks happy and healthy now.  Maybe I'll get some of those beautiful yellow blooms this year!

 

Sansevieria boncel Dwarf:  I ran into this little puppy at Lowe's of all places.  I should have probably bought all that they had because it's a hard-to-find species. I just got this one, which has three little plants.  Actually, I think it only had two when I bought it, so it's added one since.  It stays small and grows slow, the perfect little "filler" plant you can stick between other plants as they don't need a lot of light to thrive.

 Rauhia peruviana:  I got a start of this from Cactus Kathy a few years ago.  It got beat to shit by the hail storm last summer, so I just whacked off the sad leaves.  And now it's pushing out new leaves!  Notice the little leaf off to the side, indicating there's a baby bulblet underneath.  

 H. pallida:  This one is thought to be a clone of verticillata, though it looks absolutely NOTHING like my vert.  Leaves are small, succulent and very textured.  I started this on in leca a couple years ago and it's really taking off this year!  At least a couple new growth points.

H. elliptica:  This one came from CO Kathy last fall.  It's one I've tried 2 or 3 times and miserably failed.  I'm hoping this time will be the charm.  It certainly rooted easily and seems to happy at this point.  Fingers crossed!

 

H. erythrina:  I've had this one a long time and I can't remember where I got it.  I think at one time, I thought I'd lost it and took it off my database, then by the time I found it and figured out what it was, I had no idea where it came from.  I'm not even 100% sure of the ID, but I'm fairly sure.  Anyway, it hasn't grown in quite some time - maybe 2 or 3 years.  So I was thrilled when I found a teeny-tiny pair of leaves emerging from the very oldest part of the stem, about 2" above the soil line.  Wow, I was NOT expecting that!  I don't see any other signs of new growth, so I went ahead and took a single node 2-leaf cutting off the start.  That might just get it growing somewhere else as well.  

This photo is from a couple years ago, but since it hasn't grown an iota, it looks just the same.  The leaves are really cool - veins are raised and edges are just a bit wavy.  I'm looking forward to the new growth!

 

H. cv. 'Rebecca':  A constant grower that blooms off and on all year long.  So not much new to report about her.  But I just cut off an 18" stem that was starting to dehydrate.  I put it in a big pot of perlite with a bunch of other rooting cuttings and the plan will be to put it back in the pot with the mother plant once it's well on its way to rooting.  I could probably sell it, but I think it will look better if it's fuller at the pot line.

 

Haworthia coarctata:  This is probably one of the varieties - labels disappear and it's hard to see the minute differences between the various hybrids.  I've had this one growing in this little mug for a few years and it's looking pretty spectacular!  I think it might be show-worthy if I get to participate in the Des Moines show this year.

I grow so many of my Haworthias in with other plants these days.  A lot of them are very susceptible to losing roots in winter and this seems to solve that problem.  I think it works because the bigger plant (many of them grow in with Crown of Thorns or Jades) wicks the water away from them so they get a little drink but they're never water-logged.  Here's an example of a few that started out small and have filled the pot to create a nice ground cover under a Crown of Thorns:

 

There are two or three different species in there - note that some have grown variegated. They weren't variegated before!  

 

Speaking of Jades, my biggest Jade, which is probably 20 years old, was completely decimated by the hail storm, then pretty much finished off by the tree falling.  I've decided I'm going to ditch it this summer since I got a small one in a dish garden I picked up at Ace Hardware.  It's hard to part with something I've had for so long, but it's heartbreaking to look at it.  I don't think, even with several years, it will ever look right again.  There's too much damage...  My 'Skinny Fingers' Jade, which was sitting next to it on the porch, sustained a lot of damage as well, but I think it will eventually get back to a nice looking plant.  The trunk on it is so beautiful... or at least it WAS... I have to give it some time to see if it can recover.  It has put on some new leaves this winter, but after a summer outside I'll know if it's going to be worthy of keeping.

 

One last thing I wanted to talk about before I finish these observations from the last couple days.  Last week, I took on the task of whacking and restarting my H. carnosa rubra.  I got this plant at least 20 years ago from Bob Smoley as one of his "sorry" plants.  Bob was notorious for taking up to a couple months to ship plants ordered.  It's my understanding that he was a traveler and he would just take his time and send plants when he got back from a trip or when it as convenient if he wasn't traveling.  It was well-known that if you wanted a plant NOW, don't order from Bob!  But his plants were worth waiting for and it never bothered me.  So one time I ordered some plants and about 8 or 9 weeks later, they showed up and the "sorry it took so long" consolation plant was rubra.  And nice sized to boot! It's been in the same place since I got the greenhouse, a corner that only gets bright indirect light, and it twined up and around and over and through the shelf bars and I knew one day, it would be necessary to whack away.  I've been replacing my shelves one each year and I've decided that's the shelf I'm going to replace this year, so whack I did, and here's the results:

So I went to work and dug the old rootball out of the pot, filled it with fresh soil and chose the best of the cuttings to fill the pot.  I put it right back where it was and I mist it at least a couple times a day which should help it along.  And here's what it looks like:

I hope I didn't start it too early!  This time of year, everything is waking up and things root fast, so I'm hopeful that it will take off and root quickly.  Nice part is that I had enough left over to make 11 good size cuttings to root:
 

This is a hard to come by species, so I should make some good money on it!  Of course, you just never know...  Marco just sold a good-size aff. vitellina and only got $40 for it!!  That shocks me as it's one of the true beauties, but I don't believe that it could be that it's common...I think it's more likely the time of year.  Northerners are still a little paranoid about shipping because of the weather.  I bet if he sells another in a month, he'll get twice that!

 

And that's all folks!