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The Corroboree
Ymir

Happy flowering Hoodia

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My Hoodia got rather wet earlier in 2010, and I was worried that it would rot. You can see a little black patch remaining on one of the branches in a few of the pics. So I moved it under cover, then back into full sun this summer.

It went nuts! It's been flowering constantly for over a month month now and shows no signs of slowing. It's making the garden smell a little like an abattoir and there is a permanent cloud of flies around it, as well as a few very happy enterprising spiders.

Don't know if I'll get any fruits yet, but from the bases of the oldest flowers (which have since dropped off) there are some pea sized lump-oids that haven't withered away yet. Fingers crossed :)

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Awesome plant you should be very proud, thanks for sharing i have to have me one of these someday :blush:

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Amazing! How old is that plant?

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Amazing! How old is that plant?

 

Maybe 7 or 8 years. I traded someone from this forum (I think...) for a few seeds a looong time ago. Two or three of them germinated but where swiftly eaten by mice. I babied the last remaining seedling until I was sure it would survive outside. I've never been brave enough to actually put it in the garden bed with my main collection though. But if I get some seeds, and they germinate AND they survive long enough to be planted outside then I suppose I can get enough courage to properly plant it out and let it go nuts.

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wau, what a beautyfull specimen, and she looks very healthy! :wub:

totaly envy you, hehehe.

i got a total softspot for hoodias aswell, and sometimes probagated them, by cuttings and grafting onto stapelia.

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&module=images&section=viewimage&img=932

as you say, to keep them out of the heavy rains, and to give them a lot of sun, seems to be a "must".

the seeds of this succulent germinate very fast (4 day's onwards), and initial growth rate is much faster than for example echinopsis seeds.

Edited by planthelper

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Cool! i didn't know you could graft Hoodia onto Stapelia, does that mean they are closely related?

Some outstanding plant work in your photo album planthelper...

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the stepelias have very similar flowers, so i guess the must be related.

they are awsome flowers, very different from other flowers,

i remeber a very moving post at the nook, where the poster claimed the stapelia flower, gave him a spiritual experience (just by looking at it!!)

i just started growing hoodias again, they are certainly one of the most prized plants around. definately have to buy a new digi cam....

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i had very similar to this but it had long cone shaped flowers, but saldy it didnt last long i didnt know it was even a cactus and it started to mould from the inside of all the stems :( i havent seen one since!

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Hoodia and Stapelia arent cacti at all (as i discovered thismorning when i bought what looks like a hoodia sp from the local markets and decided to read up on them a bit more), they are actually succulents in the apocyanacea family. Thats the same family as frangipani, oleander, Iboga and other similar plants with generally white milky (sometimes a bit caustic) sap.

Your hoodia looks really nice, and hopefully in a few years ill have a picture like that to show off too =]

I think the most interesting thing about this plant is that it was actually patented! How can a company claim to OWN a PLANT SPECIES!?!? Especially seeing as it has a long history of use in its native habitat and is now seriously endangered by overharvesting.

Thanks for sharing

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♥ ♥ it ♥ ♥ Ymir. so healthy and the flowers very rewarding for you i'm sure. i havent seen any that happy before.

i havent been looking after my staps very well, they are struggling with the humidity. after they got too much rain, my hoodia didnt recover. i moved all the staps under cover and was not confident to water them for ages. but 2 days ago they all got water and fert. then yesterday one of them flowered!

when i lived on the west coast i had a very prolific stapelia with heaps of offsets and self-sowing seedlings and constant flowers. i'd say they like the mediterranean climate! and the crappy, crappy sand from my backyard

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after they got too much rain, my hoodia didnt recover.

 

hoodias can easely get attacked by some fungus which can spread fast and kill a plant.

very rarly a plant can survive this fungus, the trick is, to act right away when you spot the blemish.

and thats why grafting hoodias and striking them by cutting is very important!!

instead of a whole dead hoodia, you might end up with 3 just smaller ones.

just right away cut out all the infected tissue, and either graft onto stapelia or let them calluse for extra long and than just plant them out in a very friable mixture.

ymir's pic shows a hoodia which recieves far less water than mine, and i think that keeps this hoodia fungus away.

anyway, did you get any seeds?

i would not mind having a lot of hoodias so i could use them as a tonicum.

Edited by planthelper

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Grafting these things has always frightened me. If I was really confident of my skills or didn't feel like I would never find one again I might try. Lovely grafting pics BTW Planthelper :)

As for seeds, so far no changes in the hoodia nubbins really. They've continued to be nubbin-oid.

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You can see where all the flowers were attached, but the structure they came from has just remained like this. I suspect that means no fruit/seeds, considering the length of time since the flowers dropped off, but I'll keep an eye on it anyway.

Do you think it's even likely that this would be the site of fruit formation? Would it be more likely that the individual fertilized flowers would form fruits?

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