A couple of rules I use when buying off eBay are - make sure the seller says the plant you are getting is the one in the photo: I have seen some places show pics of say a 10cm specimen Ariocarpus while the small print says you will get a 1cm seedling of this species. - make sure the photo is clear, ...

Most books reduce A ausana to A variegata these days. I have seen plants labelled A ausana which look a bit different to A variegata. The leaves tend to be shorter and perhaps broader , and held more horizontal, and the body to be a bit darker green then A variegata as normally encountered. The flow...

Bill Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 23 miles definitely, a local branch, my nearest is > in a different blooming country and 90 miles away, > the nearest in Wales is 170 miles away. There's nothing else for it, you'll just have to move. :) I know North and South Wal...

Crickey, do you put a cow pat in the bottom of each pot? My plants haven't clumped up like that!

Can you edit your posts to say what species are these supposed to be?

I'm on the lookout for a form of A. variegata called Aloe ausana, if anyone has one or knows of a source. It's a little less upright growing, and a bit darker green than some of the forms seen.

As usual, I'd be happy to swap for some of my spare plants, or pay, etc.

Reminds me of an amazing picture I saw of someone propagating some large rare cactus (I forget which). Basically, he took a power drill, with a large sized drill bit, and he just drilled out the growing point. Crude, but effective, as a few months later he had a load of offsets. And it saved messing...

> Reproductive barriers hardly exist in the Cactaceae, > so on that criterion there'd be very few genera let alone species. OK, here is an offer. If anyone can show me a genuine Rebutia / Sulcorebutia hybrid, with named parents [remember the New Cactus Lexicon says they are all one genus, so it shou...

Chris the real problem is this: Botanists like to try to understand what is related to what. This causes them to stress similarity as being important. Looking at, e.g. cacti, in this light tends to result in them deciding many things "are really just the same, apart from minor differences"...

Colin

as you know, it also depends on whether they reproduce with the rest of the species.

And the very fact that we have the word "Welsh" means it is a useful label at least for some purposes...

Ralph

Colin nevertheless, as with many of the Lexicon's synonyms, there are several forms / species / whatever of Pygmaeocereus going round called P. bylesianus, as well as others (different again) under P. akersii. Whether they should be called separate species, or just cultivars, is a rather pointless a...