With their leaves covered with a thick white bloom, these plants are both distinctive and beautiful. Sometimes the leaves have some darker spots.
The flowers are white or pale pink and appear in Jan.-Feb. (The flowering plants were photographed 9 February at Kanonkop in Montagu).
One can find the plants on sandstone slopes in the mountains between Robertson and Montagu and eastward to the Gamka Poort Dam.
When comparing this species to other Astrolobas, it is handy to known that foliolosus means “with many small leaves”. Normally the leaves are spreading almost horizontally, which is uncommon in the genus.
The species occupies a wide distribution area from Laingsburg in the west to Graaff-Reinet and Cradock in the east. It also occurs in the Little Karoo. Usually the plants are up to 20 cm tall, but they may reach 30 cm.
The pictures will hopefully give you a good idea of how different the plants look like in different situations.
Although the name suggests a wide distribution, this species seems to occur only in a small area in the southwest corner of the Great Karoo and the adjacent part of the Little Karoo.
The plants form small shrubs up to 30 cm tall and can be known most easily by the long leaf sheaths.
When I started this blog just over two years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Actually it looked easy :
I had a lot of pictures people might be interested in and after a lifetime of growing, studying and photographing succulents, it should not be difficult to write some texts as well.
And yes, it is as simple as that: you select a few pictures, write a couple of words and hey presto, another post ready. Well, sometimes. Not so very often; rarely in fact.
Stumbling blocks may be:
–not enough good pictures to tell a story
–enough pictures but nothing special
–too little info on the subject
–too busy to do research
–plants can’t be identified properly.
This list is far from exhaustive, but you’ll get my drift I suppose.
The accompanying pictures illustrate the last of the problems mentioned above. They were taken a few km northeast of Montagu, on 9 Oct. 2013.
From the start is was clear that the plants belonged to Haworthia arachnoidea. But which variety? The first option is var. arachnoidea.
In his “Haworthia revisited”, Bruce Bayer says: “This variety often occurs on southern slopes where it is embedded in moss and lichen, and thus very moist in the winter months. The basic leaf colouration is darkish-green and the marginal spines are white”.
This description fits the bill (see first picture), but the distribution area is given as the Worcester/Robertson Karoo, which is west, rather than northeast of Montagu.
When I looked at the pictures once again, I realized that some plants looked like var. nigricans, which is decribed as: “distinguished by the purplish colouration towards the tips of the leaves and the generally darker colour” (picture 2). This variety is known from around Oudtshoorn in the east to the area between Barrydale and Montagu in the west (but not as far west as the locality where this picture was taken).
Here endeth the lesson and my 300th post.
In their most typical form, these plants are easy to identify, because of the more or less rounded, rather than flat rosettes (see first two pictures).
When they don’t have this give-away shape, one has to have a closer look at the leaves and spines, which are firm and stiff.
Locality is also important, as they only occur in the southwestern corner of the great Karoo and the adjacent part of the Little Karoo.
In 1985, Volume 14 of the Flora of southern Africa was published, in which H. R. Toelken dealt with the familie Crassulaceae. His description of Crassula congesta starts with the word “Biennials”. In other words, plants that germinate and grow in the first year, and flower and set seeds in the second year, after which they die.
So far so good, but … A couple of years before (1977), “A revision of the genus Crassula in southern Africa” by the same botanist had been published by the Bolus Herbarium. In this publication it is stated that:
“These plants are described as biennials but this is true only under favourable conditions. In the field, the plants often become much older before they flower but usually the whole plant dies after flowering. The plants are usually monocarpic * but regeneration after flowering may sometimes occur, but usually only when the plant has been injured and/or if the terminal inflorescence was cut of”.
* A monocarpic plant flowers only once and then dies after the seeds have ripened.
There are two subspecies:
ssp. congesta, which has leaves that are curved upwards and is found North and Northeast of the Witteberge and
ssp. laticephala, with the leaves curved downwards and occurring Southeast of that mountain range, as far East as Oudtshoorn.
In this post only pictures of the latter subspecies are shown.
The only substantial difference between the two subspecies seems to be the fact that ssp. marlothii has stilt-roots. Other differences are more a matter of gradation. The first picture represents what to my mind is the most common (and not terribly attractive) form.
This subspecies is found mainly in the Little Karoo and adjacent areas (from Worcester to east of Oudtshoorn), but occasionally also on the Knersvlakte. It prefers dry rocky slopes, usually in the shade of rocks or other plants.
