Cactus Show this Weekend

CCSS president Chris Allen setting up plants for the show. The flowering cactus is Parodia magnifica.

It's show time again for the Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society, which is holding their annual sale and judged show at Naugatuck Valley Community College this weekend. I just got back from the setup, and as has become expected, the number and quality of plants and vendors is going to be very impressive, especially for a C&S event in the East. Stop by if you're in the area; it's free to park and enter, though what happens to your wallet when you reach the sales floor or attend the auction might be another story.

My favorite part of the show, the Conophytum class. These are all mine, but there will be contributions from other growers by the time the judges come around tomorrow morning.

The Madagascan Euphorbia class was also filling up, last I saw.

The sales area was about half way to being set up earlier this evening; some nurseries come early Saturday morning to prepare their booths.

Rick Logee of WRC Greenhouses in Danielson, Ct, is a relatively new addition to the vendor list at the CCSS Show, but he has become known for putting on an especially attractive and colorful display.

Lauray of Salisbury Final Sale

Begonias and succulents at Lauray of Salisbury.

 It feels like the end of an era for the cactus and succulent community in Connecticut, with Judy Becker retiring from the business of selling plants, which she had been active in for 48 years. Judy is closing down her greenhouses, Lauray of Salisbury, and having a final open house with large discounts on the remaining material on Halloween weekend, October 30 through November 1, 10:00-5:00. Her main focus is on Euphorbia, begonias, orchids and gesneriads, but she also grows a wide range of other tropical and desert plants that are suitable for greenhouse or windowsill culture; she still had abundant stock of a lot of interesting plants as of my visit last week. The weather is still good and the autumn foliage is hanging around later than usual this year in the Litchfield Hills, so next weekend should be an excellent time for a trip to Lauray.

A bench of euphorbias, cacti, caudiciforms and other succulents at Lauray.

Judy has supported the plant hobby in New England for many years, and not just by running her nursery. She regularly hosted meeting of the Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society and other specialist groups, sometimes giving talks and presentations to share her expertise on horticultural topics. She has also donated plants and volunteered her efforts to improve the teaching greenhouses at the University of Connecticut. Judy is planning on remaining active in plant circles, so I'm sure I'll see her around at shows and meetings in the future. 

Begonias, gesneriads and other tropicals.

Newport Flower Show 2015

Rosecliff Mansion, home of the Newport Flower Show.

 The Newport Flower Show is running this weekend. I was there yesterday helping out with some of the setup, and it looks like it will be another impressive summer show in a spectacular setting at Rosecliff, one of the gilded age Newport mansions that are now public museums.

 Entries for succulent plants didn't seem quite as numerous as they have been in some previous years, but there were still some nice specimens. This giant medusoid euphorbia, Euphorbia esculenta made the trip from Pennsylvania. It was one of a number of entries from the Hamilton collection; Mrs. Hamilton is a fixture at the major East Coast flower shows.

  One of the special classes for the show this year was "Little America," for miniature gardens with a theme related to famous locations in the USA. I particularly liked this succulent dish garden titled "Roswell," complete with crashed UFO, alien accident victim and scraps of tinfoil.

The path gets rough in spots in the southern half of the Newport Cliff Walk.

 After I finished up my duties inspecting succulent plant show entries, I headed out for a stroll on the famous Newport Cliff Walk. The northern parts of the walk are pretty well paved, but the southern portion, which I had never completed before because of construction closings, gets kind of hairy in spots.

Conglomerate boulders with a quartzite outcropping at right, at then end of Ruggles Ave.

 The geology of Newport is complex, and I haven't located a good guide for interested laypeople such as myself. The southern tip of the island is weathering-resistant granitic gneiss (in the photo below), which transitions to the north into a mess of ancient Precambrian and somewhat less ancient Carboniferous sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, including serpentine, slate, quartzite and conglomerate (pudding stone - photo above). The conglomerate, a fossilized mass of gravel and cobbles, might be glacial till from a "Snowball Earth" event in the late Precambrian, when most of the planet seems to have frozen, right to the equator. I don't know enough about such things to be certain, but Snowball Earth sediments do occur in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Plantago maritima at Land's End near the southern tip of Newport, RI.

One of only a handful of native New England succulent plants occurs at various points along the Cliff Walk: Plantago maritima, or Sea Plantain, is a nearly cosmopolitan inhabitant of harsh, salt-sprayed habitats. Sea Plantain has thick, water-storing leaves that are said to be edible, but quite salty; I can't imagine it would be a good idea to eat a whole salad of them.

Viscum minimum: a Dwarf African Mistletoe

Viscum minimum fruit emerging from its host.

Parasitic plants, which obtain some or all of their water and nutrients by attaching to a free-living host plant, seem to be unusually well represented in the floras of desert regions. Mistletoes (genus Viscum), probably the most familiar of vegetable parasites, may be encountered in arid places (and elsewhere) in the old and new worlds. Mistletoes are usually hemiparasitic, meaning that they extract water and minerals from their host, but are green and can manufacture some of their own nutritional needs via photosynthesis, like ordinary plants.

Viscum minimum is a minuscule mistletoe endemic to South Africa, where it grows inside of the succulent stems of euphorbias. Most of the time, V. minimum grows internally, with no indication of its presence on the exterior of the host plant. However, when it reproduces, the mistletoe’s greenish flowers and showy orange-red berries break through the euphorbia’s skin, in order for pollination and seed dispersal to take place.

Old plant of Euphorbia polygona ‘Snowflake.’

Viscum minimum is one of the few types of mistletoe that is ever cultivated outside of its native land. The host plant, usually Euphorbia polygona, is an easy to grow and attractive addition to a greenhouse or windowsill succulent collection. The mistletoe, which can be acquired either in the form of an infected euphorbia cutting or by smearing fresh, sticky seeds onto the surface of a suitable host, doesn’t cause significant harm to its host plant, and will produce crops of colorful fruit in time for the holidays year after year.

Jerry Barad's 53rd Open House

Jerry Barad discusses salvaging plantlets from a favorite variegated Agave potatorum, which was in the process of dying after it flowered.

For more than half a century, Jerry and Bea Barad have been hosting an annual open house at their spectacular private collection of cacti and succulents in New Jersey. This year, the Massachusetts and Connecticut cactus clubs decided to work together to charter a bus down to Jerry's place for the big event.

Dr. Barad made a living as a gynecologist before his retirement, but in his free time he is also a serious student of succulent plants who has traveled extensively in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and the Canary Islands, and published his findings in national and international journals. His area of specialization is stapeliads (succulents in the Apocynaceae, or milkweed family), but he grows pretty much everything. Outside of stapeliads, his collections of Haworthia and Echeveria are especially impressive.

Stapeliad festival.

Stapelia vetula, which has dropped some of its milkweed-like seeds to the left of the flower.

Jerry has two greenhouses. The smaller one is devoted mainly to the Crassulaceae: Echeveria, Crassula, and other members of the stonecrop family. The larger, older greenhouse is divided into halves, with a warm section given over to stapeliads, pachypodiums and other more tropical plants, and a cooler section with cacti, Haworthia, mesembs and more.

Variegated Haworthia truncata. Nothing that a little 2, 4-D wouldn't clear up. I'm not a fan of variegates, but actually, that is impressive.

Outside of the greenhouse, the grounds are like a miniature botanical garden/zoo, with hardy cactus and succulent rockeries, koi pond, bamboo grove, orchards, sheep pasture, a giant vegetable garden and carefully tended borders with annuals and dozens of large Brugmansia (Angel's Trumpet) plants that are planted out every spring, then dug out and stored in a cool garage all winter. It must be an enormous job to take care of it all, but Jerry does have hired help.

The view from the house. The greenhouses are behind the clump of bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata?) at left.

The trip went smoothly, and I think everyone had a great day photographing plants, meeting fellow enthusiasts from all over the region, and just lounging by the pool. I'll be looking forward to visiting the Barads again some time!

Connecticut visitors Martha B., Bill B. and Ken M. between the koi pond and the swimming pool.

Echeveria and other Mexican Crassulaceae in the smaller greenhouse.

Impatiens mirabilis, a semi-succulent lithophyte (plant that grows on rocks) from tropical Southeast Asia.

Euphorbia piscidermis, a remarkable example of evolutionary convergence with the unrelated cactus genus Pelecyphora.

Me next to a giant Adenia (A. fruticosa?), which apparently grew from a piece of stem that Jerry left by the post many decades ago.