Succulents are amazing survivors

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 16

Succulents are amazing survivors

Gardener’s 1 : DIARY

Y Derrick H Rooney

Succulents make good terrace plants because although they respond like any other kind to copious watering and warm weather in their growing seasons, they are also tolerant of neglect and will not suffer unduly if left untended for a week or longer. Some succulents . have extraordinary powers of recuperation after neglect. I still have a couple, propagated from plants that I rescued from oblivion among a batch of old flower pots that I bought at an estate action about 15 years ago. The pots came out of a tumbledown glasshouse and I don’t suppose anyone had watered them for at least a year, maybe longer. The plants were dessicated, shrivelled away almost to nothing. A normal plant would have accepted long since that it was far beyond the point of no return, but after a good soak in a bucket of water to liberate the surviving roots from the old soil .that had baked as hard as a brick (in one case, I recall, this took several days) the two were beginning to plump out, and after little more than a month in fresh soil they were as good as new. Of course, the two plants concerned were tough commoners — Sedum prealtum, a yellow-flowered shrubby kind that is one of the few succulents sufficiently hardy to frost to be grown as a garden shrub, and Graptopetalum paraguayense, a popular and handsome plant with fleshy, pigeon-coloured leaves.

They are known survivors. Even so, I don’t recommend this sort of trial by neglect for any plant — though the renascence of this duo does indicate the extremes to which you can push succulents.

Some growers of succulents and cacti, and one of my best gardening friends is among them, actually like to keep their plants lean and hungry, in the belief that half-starved plants are more natural looking. But I believe that a gardener ought to be able to do better than nature. I like to try to keep my plants looking plump and well fed.

Few succulents respond more pleasingly to kind treatment than the cheverias, a largely Mexican genus in the crassula family. There are manv soecies in this

tropical genus, some shrubby, some prostrate, some rosulate. The most useful are those which come from high altitudes and are thus somewhat resistant to frost.

One of my favourites is Echeveria gilva. I should pluralise this name, because I have two gilvas, one with apple-green leaves, the other with red ones.

I have always grown them in pots, but I have seen the green gilva growing in the open, admittedly in a milder garden than mine, and it ought to “do” outside in Christchurch.

Gilva, or the gilvas, are plants of unknown origin. The red one is a mystery to me, and I have had it so long I cannot recall where it came from; but green gilva, the original, I believe surfaced into cultivation when it was found among the collection of a noted Californian botanist who had spent much of his academic life systematising the naming of echeveria species. No wild location is known for it, and it is presumed to be a hybrid of Mexican origin, most likely gathered up from a garden, as the putative parents do not occur wild in the same locality. One parent is assumed to be E. elegans, the lovely species planted in the Christchurch floral clock. Gilva’s hardiness must come from this parent, because the other, E. agavoides, will not survive a winter without at least the protection of a frame.

E. elegans itself makes an excellent pot plant if it is repotted into fresh soil every

year — the roots seem very quickly to exhaust the nutrients in the mix, and when that happens they begin to die, and the plant goes back. In the open ground — preferably on a bank or slope — this species proliferates and makes large, handsome clumps. It will tolerate moderately heavy frost.

Elegans needs some water at all times of the year, and in fact has its main growing period during the cooler months, whereas agavoides requires a definite resting period in winter. I have to admit to being somewhat confused about the names of these plants. Elegans is unmistakeable,. and one of my gilvas — the green one — has stubby leaves and one or two other features that suggest intermediacy, while the other gilva looks just like agavoides, but different.

And I have half a dozen, all different, but all recognisably the same or closely related species, labelled “E. agavoides.” The typical species of Echeveria agavoides comes from San Lui Potosi, Mexico, and several reference books that I have consulted describe it as haying large, stemless rosettes with apple green leaves, flushed red, wider than they are long, and yellow and red flowers on 50cm stems.

Unfortunately, while green gilva is close to this description, none of my plants labelled “agavoides” fits it, though most of them came as it were from the horse’s mouth — or shall I say, a grower who raised them

from seeds collected in the habitat. Echeveria agavoides as I grow it has medium or large rosettes of very thick, fleshy leaves, tapering to a long point and concave on the upper surface. The colour ranges from light green near the base through olive green to varying flushes of red near the tips.

Snap a leaf in half, and you will see that inside the skin, which is tough but not very thick, the leaf consists of pulpy, semi-transparent flesh from which oozes curiously sticky juice. Touch this, and it comes off the broken leaf in long streamers, like the non-throw oil that I use to lubricate the bar of my chainsaw. Several of my plants set offsets freely, which stamps them as the variety prolifera — the “type” of agavoides never has offsets, but remains as a single, slowly enlarging rosette well into old age. All my agavoides (gilvas, too) have flowers which are, on the exterior, rosy red, shading to yellow at the tips. In the largest plant, which has gradually progressed into an eight-inch pot and has never made an offset, the interior of the flowers is mustard yellow. This, I believe, confirms it as “true” agavoides. In the prolifera types the flowers are orange-yellow inside. The big plant has flowered very well this season, as have many other succulents and cacti, reflecting perhaps the good ripening they received last summer, and now it appears to be setting fruit. If these contain any seed, it will be interesting to see what comes up. In the meantime, this plant will continue to get plenty of TLCA, which is the most effective stimulant to plant growth that I have tried.

TLCA, in case you are the gardeners who have never heard of it, is an acronym for “tender loving care and attention.” Plenty of it gives most plants a boost. Annual repotting, and careful watering throughout the growing season so that the soil is never too dry, never too wet, are other ingredients for success.

I don’t think the type of soil mix is very important so long as it is neutral in reaction, well nourished, and free draining.