Very nice Mike. It resembles a less spiky pillansii.

Really sorry to hear your wife is unwell Mike. Hope she is on the mend.

Trichodiadema demonstrating where the name comes from.

Looks a bit more convincingly 'hirsute' this afternoon. Flies don't care about ID anyway.

Love that Trichocaulon Tony!

This happened to pop open when I was looking at it this morning, so I took these over the subsequent hour. First time it has flowered. Allegedly Stapelia gettleffii/hirsuta. It doesn't look quite right compared with photos on the web and looks very like my S.grandiflora. Opinions welcome!

Beautiful!

My youngster decided to pop its first flower this week. It has a lot of catching up to do, looking at Mike's plant! I followed the advice on the here last year (2022) and hung it up outside for the summer. Tried the same this year but after two weeks of cold relentless rain in July I feared it might...

FWIW, my mix is something like 2:2:1 JI:cat litter:grit. I find it is too light without the grit. Mixes based on the cat litter don't seem to get saturated the way a straight grit mix would, but they do stay "damp" for longer than you might expect. Perlite is the opposite, it hardly absor...

I've used it in various combinations Ian. Very few plants are now in pure cat litter. Most have some grit added and maybe a little humus in the form of a bark based compost. It depends on the plants. Pure cat litter needs you to really keep on top of the feeding and nutrient balance. Also my wife ex...

I used to grow barklyi and it seeded everywhere but have since lost it. Now it is incrassatum that seeds everywhere!

The biggest problem I found with barklyi was it seemed very prone to botrytis.