Mesembs Archives - Page 7 of 21

Conophytum calculus ssp. calculus

The Latin word calculus means pebble and in this case probably refers to both the roundness and the firmness of the plant bodies.
These bodies are to 30 mm diameter, ball- to barrel-shaped, very firm, whitish-green to pale yellowish-green, without any markings; they form a hemisphere with age.
The flowers are open at night (sometimes staying open during cool mornings) and are said to smell strongly like cloves or carnations; they are golden yellow to deep reddish orange and appear in April-June.
The plants occur in full sun on salty quartz flats and gentle slopes in the Knersvlakte.

First picture taken 10th Sept. 2010; others 12th May 2017

Argyroderma delaetii (part 1 of 2)

No less than 25 synoniems have been recorded for this species, so it will come as no surprise that it is quite variable.
As a rule, the plants consist of only one pair of leaves, rarely 2 or 3. These leaf-pairs are 20-50 mm long and 15-30 mm wide, sunken into the ground. Old leaves stay on the plants for 1 or 2 years.
The flowers appear in April – June; they are 20-50 mm in diameter and may be white, pink, red , magenta, or yellow (see part 2). Even within one population one can come across all these colours.
The plants are locally abundant on flats or slopes rich in quartz pebbles in the Vanrhynsdorp area.

The first 3 pictures were taken on 30 March 2012, # 4 early next morning. Last one: 3 Sept. 2010

Lithops karasmontana ssp. karasmontana var. karasmontana

Lithops karasmontana occurs only in Namibia and is a very variable species with 3 subspecies, one of them with 4 varieties.

Var. karasmontana is found to the west and southwest of the Great Karasberg and on its own supplies most of the variability in the species, ranging from opaque and uniformly coloured plants to ones with narrow channels and markings and others with more or less translucent open windows. All this combined with a great variation in colours, from bluish-white to yellowish brown and brick red.
The flowers are white and usually 2.5-3.5 cm in diameter.

The plants figuring here, were photographed on a rose quartz outcrop near Grunau.

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Malephora mollis

It is usually easy to identify a plant as a Malephora. Beyond that however, things are rather muddled up. So it is with some trepidation that I attach a species name to the pictures shown here.
M. mollis is described as a profusely branched shrub up to 50 cm tall, with leaves three-angled to round in cross-section and to 20 mm long and about 3 mm thick.
The distribution area is given as Laingsburg and both the flowering time and the habitat as unknown.
The photos were taken on stony flats northwest of Laingsburg, between early August and mid-October.

Leipoldtia schultzei

These plants are easily mistaken for a Lampranthus or a Ruschia. Their fruits however mostly have 10 compartments, whereas in Lampranthus the number is always 5 and in Ruschia usually 5, sometimes 6.
They form untidy mats or sprawling shrubs, sometimes with some erect branches to 70 cm tall.
The magenta flowers are 0.6-3 cm in diameter and appear mainly between autumn and early spring: April-September.
The plants occur widespread from Namaqualand to Humansdorp and Uniondale and are often locally abundant in flats and slopes with gravel, sand or loam. They are not browsed by stock or game, so when a great many of them are growing together, this indicates past disturbance and overgrazing of the veld. In the southern part of the distribution area, the plants will grow quickly on disturbed ground, e.g on road sides.

Gibbaeum (Muiria) hortenseae

These peculiar and very distinctive plants form little clumps of soft and velvety-hairy* leaf-bodies which are about 4 cm tall and 3 cm in diameter.
During the long resting period, the bodies are completely enclosed in the dry sheath-like remains of the previous pairs of leaves.
Because the leaves are completely united, the flowers have to rupture the tops of the bodies in order to emerge. They are about 2 cm in diameter, white to mauve and appear from November to Januari.
The plants are locally abundant on quartz outcrops, but are known from only one location (west of Barrydale in the western Little Karoo), in a highly saline area. They grow together with G. album -see first picture- and sometimes hybridise.

In his book Flowering stones and Midday flowers, Gustav Schwantes dedicates nearly 3 pages to this species and he is clearly highly impressed by it, as witnessed by the following remarks:
“The plant exhibits the highest expression of leaf succulence in the whole plant kingdom.
There is nothing of greater interest among the Mesembryanthemaceae than this living creature which is so unusual in shape and structure”.

*the hairs are among the longest in the family.

Drosanthemum curtophyllum

It is often rather difficult to identify Drosanthemum species, but in this case the name is a useful pointer (curtophyllum = with shortened leaves).
The plants are shrublets 10-30 cm tall, with branches that are mostly erect, rooting when growing in sand.
The leaves are not just short, but also comparatively fat: 3-5 mm long and 2-4 mm wide.
In September-October the flowers appear; they have white, pale pink or bicoloured petals up to 7 mm long.
The plants occur from the coastal belt in the Namibian Sperrgebiet to Nuwerus in Namaqualand, mostly in sand or gravel, but also in granite.

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Cephalophyllum tetrastichum

Described in 1989, this is still a species that is little known about.
It is only found in sand between rocks in the salt spray zone of South Africa’s northwest coast (near Port Nolloth).
The leaves are trigonous*, placed in four rows (=tetrastichum) and often with a black cover, probably caused by a fungus.
As the flowering time is not mentioned in the literature, it may be of interest to know that the photos below were made in late August and early September.

* trigonous = three-angled in cross-section

Brianhuntleya intrusa

On seeing this species for the first time, one would be excused for mistaking it for an Antegibbaeum. It was first described as a Ruschia, but in 2003 a new genus was established just for this one species. Since then, two more species have been added. If you are interested in the whole complicated story, you should read A Gordion knot in Ruschioideae by H. Hartmann and I. Niesler in Bradleya 30/2012, p. 33-60.

The plants form dense mats 7-10 cm high with persistent leaves 5 to 6 cm long and 0.7-0.8 cm wide.
They flower in June-August; the flowers have long stalks (to 5 cm long), are to 3.5 cm in diameter and open for only a few hours in the afternoon. After pollination they turn into
tumble fruits.
Although the species grows only in the Robertson, Swellendam and Worcester districts of the western Cape, it is locally abundant there, usually in full sun on gentle shale slopes, at an altitude of 200-250 m. In this area most of the rainfall occurs in winter.

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Oophytum oviforme

Old plants of this species form clumps with up to 20 egg-shaped (=oviform) bodies, which are 1-2 cm tall and 1-3 cm in diameter.
Especially when flowering, the very dense stands in which they grow present an unbelievable show. The white to rose-pink flowers appear in August-September.

The plants occur on quartzitic flats and slopes in the southern Knersvlakte, where the rainfall is on average about 125 mm per year (mainly in winter).

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