Succulents are ideal plants to nurture in an area that experiences low rainfall. They also do well in miniature indoor gardens, like these ones:
They can be grown in pots:
Some succulents are happy to trail over rocks or hang over a terrace wall:
Then there are aloes – my favourite – growing out in the garden and ready to provide beautiful flowers during the colder winter months:
Aloe broomii has several common names, among these are Mountain Aloe and Snake Aloe. The first because it occurs on rocky slopes at an altitude of between 1 000 to 2 000 metres above sea level; the second because of its long, snake-like racemes. The species is named after the anthropologist Robert Broom (1866-1951), who first collected it in 1905 at Pampoenpoort, between Carnarvon and Victoria West.
The plants grow as large, multi-leaved rosettes. Their yellowish-green leaves are spear-like with short, sharp teeth along their margins. The inflorescence is distinctive with the short, stubby, greenish flowers being densely packed. They arise erect from each rosette and have no branches as we commonly see in other aloes.
The flowers are short and broad with only their stamens visible because they are completely hidden by longer bracts. They nonetheless attract a variety of pollinators, such as bees, wasps and ants, as well as sunbirds.
Aloe broomii grow in the Karoo region, which becomes very hot during the summer and very cold in the winter months. The plants are often solitary or may be branched into two or more heads which divide to form groups of up to three rosettes. These ones are growing in the Mountain Zebra National Park.
The plant Orbea variegata has often been called the carrion flower of Table Mountain, for this falls within its natural range along the coastal areas of the Western Cape. Also known as the Common Carrion Flower, Cape Fritillary, and Starfish Plant, it probably ranks among the most widely cultivated of the South African carrion flowers – I see its seeds for sale on nursery sites in the UK, United States of America, New Zealand, and Australia, although I have read some reports of it now being regarded as a weed in the latter country.
The flowers have a light creamy yellow background covered with brown, red, or purple spots. They vary in size from between 8 and 9 cm in diameter. As you can see, the flower is star-shaped with a lighter coloured ring or bowl shape in the centre.
The fruit are paired capsules that resemble a horn. At maturity they split open to release numerous small brown fruits crowned with long white hairs. So far this plant has only one.
These plants usually bloom from mid-summer to spring and are pollinated by flies, which they attract by producing a carrion smell that deceives flies into thinking that there may be some dead meat on which to lay their eggs. As the flies move from flower to flower, they transfer the pollen from one plant to the next. What I found fascinating was watching how this flower closed after it had been open for a day:
It appeared to close one petal at a time. Here there is only one petal to go:
This is a new bud:
I watched it opening slowly over the course of a morning, one petal at a time:
Blogging has proved to be a boon in terms of sharing information and learning about new places and things. It is a year ago now that a fellow blogger set me on the right path towards identifying a succulent I had grown from a broken twig I had found along a path while walking in a wild area. I followed the clues and eventually found the correct answer in my Field Guide to Succulents in South Africa by Smith, Crouch and Figueiredo. This plant proved to be a Pachypodium succulentum, commonly known as Thickfoot, thanks to its massive underground caudex – a thickened, underground, water-storing, tuberous stem, which helps the plant to survive during drought periods.
I had originally placed the twig in a small pot, where it survived for several years. Since finding out more about it, I have moved it to a larger tub – currently shared with an ancient lavender plant. It flowered as usual in October, but didn’t indicate it was more comfortable in its larger pot until a few weeks ago, when it started putting out new shoots. I think this shows that the plant finally has room to grow!
These plants are endemic to South Africa and naturally occur in stony grassland and along rocky ridges in the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape as well as in the western Free State. I found this one peeping through other plants in the Great Fish River Reserve.
While the flowers are very attractive and vary from white to crimson, the shoots bear sharp spines in pairs.
According to my The Illustrated Dictionary of Southern African Plant Names by Hugh Clarke and Michael Charters and edited by Eugene Moll, Pachypodium means ‘thick foot’. The name being derived from the Greek pachys meaning ‘thick’ and podion, which refers to the ‘foot’ of a vase. The species name succulentum means ‘succulent’, referring to its swollen stem.
Apparently the large tubers are eaten by both porcupines and baboons.
So far, my plant has not developed enough to show much of its caudex above ground. I am hoping that it will continue to thrive where it is growing now.
For further information, read https://pza.sanbi.org/pachypodium-succulentum
The Christy Minstrels sang:
Green, green, it’s green they say
On the far side of the hill
Green, green, I’m goin’ away
To where the grass is greener still
I have spent several weeks of this year looking at the far side of the hill, catching up with family in Norway, where the green hills, trees and grass are such a striking contrast to the more sombre colours we are used to. Here is a Norwegian house we passed on one of our trips in that country:
Then there was this amazing crop of courgettes picked in a UK garden:
Once home in South Africa, I appreciate the green bark of fever trees (Vachellia xanthophloea) with their characteristic, almost luminous, lime green to greenish-yellow bark. While these trees are familiar to me from my youth spent in the Lowveld region, they have become popular trees to plant in public gardens and parking lots all over the country. Rudyard Kipling has one of his characters in The Elephant’s Child, tell the Elephant’s Child where he must go in order to find out what the Crocodile eats for dinner as: Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, ‘Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.’
It is good to return after a two-week sojourn in the Western Cape to see the aloes in our garden growing well, their spiky leaves swelling with maturity:
Even though the String of Pearls succulent (Curio rowleyanus) – a gift from a friend – is relatively drought tolerant, it is a relief to note that it is thriving despite my neglect:
An even greater surprise – and relief – is to find that over 65mm rain fell during our absence. There were still droplets on the nasturtium leaves:
Something Over Tea 