International Crassulaceae Network Forum

Thanks Derek,

Thought I would try to help a bit, or perhaps confuse. 

Here are five plants.


From top left clockwise
tecta Southpoort
A - same as A above, labelled tecta, Derek suggests not?
N - -namaquensis Silverfontein  ex Mesa Gardens collected by Brack and Hammer
D - another plant labelled tecta, looks more like namaquensis
ausensis Karasana

A close up of three of them


The tecta Southpoort seems unambiguous, small spherical papillae (looking almost like pearls) tufted around the hydathodes,  Leaves very stiff, so much so that one almost broke when I tried to bend.  Flower with tiny petals , scarcely recurved.  Here are 3 more pics of it.   http://www.crassulaceae.net/index.php?o … p;Itemid=5 . 

The ausensis is also pretty clear.  When you look at it under a 40x scope, it has fine hairs all over.  even under teh scope , they look like hairs, at least 10 times taller than wide.  Petals wide, recurved, much like the ones shown by JMM here.  http://www.crassulaceae.net/index.php?o … p;Itemid=5

The namaquensis is interesting.  leaves pretty flexible, and covered with hairs to the naked eye, evenly dispersed thru the plant.  When you look under the scope, they seem less hairlike, indeed, thick and perhpas best described as like small canine teeth.  no more then 3 or 4x as tall as wide, with sharp apex, and recurved.  Perhaps they would qualify as what Tolken says are coarse recurved hairs for this species.   I don't have a good picture of the flower, but they were narrow, with a narrow tip at the apex, perhaps consistent with Tolken's descritpion of a "rostrate" apex. 

Plant A came as tecta and no data, and looks very similiar to me.  But some differences - the papillae are cylindrical, with rounded dome tops, perhaps twice as tall as wide.  Leaves very stiff, like the tecta Southpoort.   But the flowers are a bit different, larger, more recurved, and proliferous.  here is pic of flowers and leaf



D- this plant also came as tecta, but seems wrong.  very similar to the namaquensis Silverfontein re leaf, flesibility, and similar papillae/coarse hairs.  Here is flower, which is very similar to the silverfontein plant


It is interesting that I would only call the trichomes on ausensis as hairs, for the others they thicker structrues than what I would call hairs.    It is very difficult to try to describe them..  But as I look thru the pics on this site of ausensis titanopsis, there aer some close ups of the epidermis.  The structures on Plant A are very similar, tho thicker and thus less translucent.  Closest to those in the fifth picture showing a side view of a blister.  see next post called Trichomes for more on this. 

Back to plant A - I have not seen enough tecta to know whether this is within its range.  It looks different than those in Rowley and those I have seen at teh HBG, all of which are more white like the Southpoort plant.  And more importanty, Derek does not think it is tecta like and I presume he has seen more than his share.  Also, the petals seem too large and recurved in comparison to the Southpoort plant.  As I view it, it looks like it could be the creation of crossing tecta with ausensis, see the second picture here.  And the flowers would fit.  Of course this is pure SPECULATION.   

Rowley's book would indicate that tecta and ausensis are far apart, and thus could not hybridize in the wild.  But this plant has no data I am aware of, and thus could well be a cultivated hybrid, perhaps inadvertant.  Namaquesnsi and ausensis seem to overlap tho I don't see a particular locality in Tolken where they both occur. 

Mike

Last edited by ekim (2009-12-25 12:10:02)