Richtersveld Archives - Page 2 of 6

Dracophilus dealbatus (syn. D. montis-draconis, D. proximus)

Plants of this species form small compact cushions to 5 cm tall and 16 cm in diameter, with leaves 2.5-4.5 cm long.
The honey-scented flowers open in late afternoon and stay open for most of the night. They are magenta or white, up to 3.5 cm in diameter and appear mainly in July-August.
The plants grow in gravelly plains and rock crevices from southern Namibia to northern Namaqualand. Rainfall in this area is on average less than 100 mm per year and occurs mainly in winter.

Mesembs of the world (1998) supplies the following snippet of information: “Dracophilus plants are not very popular but are nevertheless often seen in collections”. In other words, many people do not really like them but still grow them. To me this seems to indicate that a lot of succulent growers are masochists, but maybe I’m just missing something here. I do however fully agree with another remark in the book : ”When well-grown, they can be very beautiful”.

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

Pelargonium echinatum (part 1 of 2)

The specific name echinatus means prickly or armed with spines or prickles and is derived from the word echinus (hedgehog).
When you look at the recurved thorny stipules on the stems, it is easy to see where the name comes from.

The plants may be up to 60 cm tall, but are usually much smaller; they have few to many branches, with leaves 2-3 cm long and 3-4 cm broad on relatively long stalks.
The flowers are about 3 cm in diameter and appear from July to November in groups of 3-8. They vary in colour from white and pink to brilliant purple, with darker blotches.
This beautiful and interesting species occurs from the Richtersveld to Clanwilliam,
usually on dry granite or sandstone slopes and protected by bushes or overhanging rocks.

Conophytum meyeri (part 1 of 2)

When a species has many synoniems (16 in this case), one cannot help but wonder what that means. There may be a couple of reasons for the plethora of names, but in this case the most likely one is the species being so highly variable. Understandably, this makes it often difficult to positively identify it. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the species often grows together with C. bilobum and hybridizes with it, resulting in swarms of plants with intermediate characters.

The plants form small or large cushions (up to 30 cm in diameter), which may be straggly or neatly domed.
The bodies are up to 2.5 cm long and 1.5 cm in diameter, heart-shaped to nearly spherical, usually slightly bilobed and sometimes slightly keeled. The keel lines are often red, the fissure zone has small, windowed patches on either side and the skin is pale green to yellowish green or greyish green, smooth or velvety-papillate and often spotted.
As a rule the flowers are yellow (rarely pure white), with petals often drooping. They appear in March -June.

The plants occur mostly in the western Richtersveld on granite, gneiss, sandstone or quartz slopes -often in shade.

All 3 pictures taken 6 Oct. 2011.

Crassula corallina (part 2: subsp. macrorrhiza)

Compared to ssp. corallina, these plants look more sturdy, with leaves 4-5 mm long and wide. The leaves are also much whiter.
Another difference is that they have a tuberous main root up to 1.2 cm wide (macrorrhiza= with a big root).
This subspecies has a generally more northern distribution, from the Grunau-Warmbad area in Namibia to adjacent parts in South Africa, from Vioolsdrift to Kenhardt, usually on coarse sandy flats.
The flowers appear from October to January.

crascoramac 2011-10-03 6723

crascoramac 2011-07-10 5817

crascoramac 2011-07-12 6106

crascoramac 2011-07-10_DSC5819

Euphorbia dregeana

As the first picture shows, these up to 2m tall, dense clumps are very conspicuous in the field.
The branches are yellowish-green to grey-green, usually up to 3 cm thick at the base and 1.2 cm in diameter above, with leaves that soon disappear.
Between July to September one can find the plants in flower.

The plants occur mainly in flat open gravelly or sandy plains, sometimes on low stony slopes. They are widely distributed from the Haalenberg east of Luederitz in Namibia to Kamieskroon in Namaqualand and Namies in Bushmanland.

Euph stapelioides

These peculiar little plants occur in the northwest corner of the Richtersveld (Oranjemund to Koekenaap), where they form rather dense mats.
They have tuberous roots and tough and fibrous aerial stems, which are more or less terete, 30-100 mm long and 2-5 mm in diameter. The stems do not stick out more than a few cm above ground, as a result of the continuously blowing sand-blasting winds; they are protected by a thick leathery skin.
The flowers appear from April through September and are usually yellow-green (Williamson in his Richtersveld book gives the colour as mainly chocolate to orange-brown).

Bulbine mesembryanthoides (part 3 of 3)

Subspecies namaquensis differs from its sibling by having no more than two leaves, one of which is usually inconspicuous.
The inflorescence is shorter (5-10 cm tall) and always single and the filaments have a double tuft of hairs.
These plants occur only in the Northern Cape, from Springbok to the Richtersveld in gravelly places.

Othonna taraxacoides

Almost two years ago I published a post on Othonna auriculifolia. Today’s subject could be considered the northern counterpart of that species. Both were described in the first half of the 19th century, when taxonomy was still a very European science. This probably explains why both specific epithets refer to well known European plants: taraxacoides means looking like a Taraxacum (dandelion) and auriculifolia means with leaves like Primula auricula (bear’s ears or cow slip).

O. taraxacoides is a stemless tuberous geophyte up to 10 cm tall. The leaves are leathery and wedge- to egg-shaped or more or less kidney-shaped. Usually they are 2-3 cm long and up to 2 cm wide, with small rounded teeth and often incised with 3-5 rounded lobes.
The flower heads are 0.8-1.5 cm in diameter and appear in July and August.
The plants occur on open pebbly places or quartz patches from the
Richtersveld to Kamieskroon.

Hoodia (Trichocaulon) alstonii

Of the small-flowered Hoodias this is by far the tallest, with plants growing into many-stemmed shrubs up to slightly over a meter tall and 0.5 m wide.
The stems have an unusual whitish, grey-green colour and their 20-22 obtuse angles are armed with exceptionally hard and sharp spines.
The upper parts of the stems produce large numbers of flowers 1-1.8 cm in diameter.
The species has an unusual distribution. It occurs in the winter rainfall area of
Namibia on stony hillsides east of Luederitz and along the lower reaches of the Orange River.
In South Africa it also occurs along the lower Orange River: the western part of the area here receives rainfall in winter, whereas in the eastern part the rain falls in summer.
These habitats are surprisingly arid and in general the plants grow in the open on either rocky slopes or stony, flat areas.