Name this Dudleya

[Boo Hollow]

Name this Dudleya. Am I Green or White. Dudleya brittonii.

[wuzz]

D viscida?

[Boo Hollow]

Originally Posted by wuzz

D viscida?

Wuzz - It was more of a rhetorical question. Although it looks sticky, it is not. The leaf shape is also not akin to D. viscida. This is a varieagted Dudleya brittonii that came up out of thousands and thousands of seedlings. The question was, since there are both green and white forms, is this one stuck in between

[wuzz]

ah.. a rhetorical question. I wasn't ready for that.
so now you know...D. viscida is my favorite.
Can you just post a picture of viscida to make me happy?

[Allen Repashy]

Picture a D. edulis and then make it ugly because dirt sticks all over it

[wuzz]

*sigh*
all my plants are ugly

[amanzed]

At first I read that too fast, "Picture D. edulis, then hit it all over with an ugly stick."

Yes, I have a silly mind. --dean

[Tim Harvey]

Weren't all Dudleya stuck mightily and repeatedly with the ugly stick?

T

[Allen Repashy]

Originally Posted by Tim Harvey

Weren't all Dudleya stuck mightily and repeatedly with the ugly stick?

T

I am pretty sure it was the same stick that was used on you as a child

[Matt Maggio]

Someone keeps hitting mine every summer... funny thing.

[Boo Hollow]

Oaky. So not all people are fans of dudleyas. To say they got hit with an ugly stick is a stretch. Summer dormancy can realy make them look like a dead puddle of leaves, but alas, they come back with a vengance and I have found them to have phenomenal forgiveness when really neglected. I have a seed tray planted 7 years ago that is wet during the winter and bone dry during the summer - yet they come back every year, albeit, they are very small plants and disappear at times. For the beginner, it is a good starting plant.

I believe the following pictures attest to some of the plant's subtle beauty. Look at the last picture. The seeds just couldn't wait to free themselves prior to germinating.

[Allen Repashy]

I actually like Duds quite a bit and have about a dozen species populating a spot in my garden including D. viscida. I even have a couple of cool hybrids. I was just commenting that viscida isn't one that I would consider attractive compared to something like pachyphytum or brittoni.

[Boo Hollow]

Originally Posted by Allen Repashy

I actually like Duds quite a bit and have about a dozen species populating a spot in my garden including D. viscida. I even have a couple of cool hybrids. I was just commenting that viscida isn't one that I would consider attractive compared to something like pachyphytum or brittoni.

Allen - the first picture represents my planting area of plants that I received from Paul Thompson some 25+ years ago (with the exception of the D. pulverulenta). I have allowed this group to open pollinate and selected the best seedling to carry on various "hort origin" hybrids. Quite a few of the plants in the picture were recently lost to a deranged gopher whom jumped the gopher baskets and chowed down. What a loss. Lots of sentimental value there.

We are hoping to have a nice grouping of D. densiflora next spring. I need to check the hurdles to selling them though (endagered species). I am trying to retain the oddities and isolate them for prevention of cross pollination, but it is exhausting and tedious work to wrap the flower heads in ultra-fine muslin cloth to exclude pollinators. I have D. p. arizonica in trials right now. Trying to find a range of heat tolerant plants for most people's gardening needs. Cold tolerance is another challenge, as most fancy the Baja species that hate the cold. Will post other pics of Dudleya as time permits.

Thanks for the feedback!

[amanzed]

Aww, I love Dudleyas and want a lot more. Esp. pulverulenta, brittonii, hassei, lanceolata, et al. I know a wild population in urban L.A. (species? wish I knew). I hope it survives!

My initial trigger of the silly portion of the thread was just a visual word scanning slip which was funny, esp. at a moment my duddies are not looking their best.

I would love to know more of the millions-of-years story of how our native California Crassulaceae diverged from their earliest common ancestors with Sedum, Graptopetalum, Echeveria, etc.

I think a lot this story remains untold.

--dean

[Boo Hollow]

Originally Posted by amanzed

Aww, I love Dudleyas and want a lot more. Esp. pulverulenta, brittonii, hassei, lanceolata. I know a wild population in urban L.A. (species? wish I knew). I hope it survives!

My initial trigger of the silly portion of the thread was just a visual word scanning slip which was funny, esp. at a moment my duddies are not looking their best. Yes - word play!

I would love to know more of the millions-of-years story of how our native California Crassulaceae diverged from their earliest common ancestors with Sedum, Graptopetalum, Echeveria, etc.

I think a lot this story remains untold.

--dean

Dean - the first picture is also a repesentation of an "all natives" planting from the rocks to the manzanita in the background to the bulbs that have given up the ghost for this season. You might enjoy this picture of what I was told is D. calcicola -

[wuzz]

Boo.. keep the pictures coming.. They are great
The D. viscida I owned came from the Weber nursery of Encinitas. It was quite a few years ago. I was told they were collected from a hillside in O'side.
I dunno... but I don't remember if my viscida had any red anywhere on it... was a fantastic shade of green...I thought it was an eyeful. yea yea,, it was sticky.. that was cool... but it also had the most wonderful scent... mighty powerful.. I have a couple other Duddies too.
If somebody was going to hit my viscida with a stick... they would have a two dollar agave thrown at them.

[Kelly Griffin]

So BOO...when are you gonna write it?

I like the picture of the cymosa you posted ~not so sure it is calcicola as I can see it is growing in the wild and on granite substrate.

I have had the opportunity and time to see some of the Sierra Dudleyas including the ssps costafolia, calcicola, and other interesting varients on the cymosa group. Not likely very commercial but interesting none the less. The calcicolas I found were on a limestone out crop not far from Johnsondale north of Lake Isabella.

Kelly

[Boo Hollow]

Originally Posted by Kelly Griffin

So BOO...when are you gonna write it?

I like the picture of the cymosa you posted ~not so sure it is calcicola as I can see it is growing in the wild and on granite substrate.

I have had the opportunity and time to see some of the Sierra Dudleyas including the ssps costafolia, calcicola, and other interesting varients on the cymosa group. Not likely very commercial but interesting none the less. The calcicolas I found were on a limestone out crop not far from Johnsondale north of Lake Isabella.

Kelly

Kelly -
In talking with Stephen McCabe on the "D. calcicola" picture, he was the one whom suggested this name over D. cymosa. However, he added that there have been specimens from the Walker Pass area that match D. paniculata - of which this may be a natural cross between either the D. calcicola x D. cymosa or D. calcicola x D. paniculata or other. The flower colors are incorrect for D. calcicola , which should be pale - straw yellow, but don't match D. cymosa cymosa - more red - orange in this area, or D. abramsii, - can have yellow or pale pink or yellow with pink/red dots, (which is what Bartel suspected at first and Moran actually thought it might be D. cymosa setchellii at the time.), or D. paniculata - which can have a wide range of yellow-orange-red-pink flowers. Very nice plant to say the least. What is odd is that there is a large granitic finger slicing through the large limestone mass and D. calcicola is growing not only on the limestone, but amongst the granite as well. Based on the original species description, specimens were found on both substrates. This is from Bartel and Shevock's original description in Madrono, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 210-216, 10 November 1983:

"Dudleya calcicola occurs predominantly on pre-Cretaceous limestones (Smith 1965) within chaparral or pinyon-juniped woodland at 850-1700m. Extensive field searches on adjacent Mesozoic granitic... have located only a few populations of D. calcicola in the Kern River watershed generally east of Lake Isabella

Again, it is probably a case of tolerance over obligate substrate as in D. setchellii. Does not need to grow on serpentine, but tolerates the higher nickel and arsenic that other plants can. Kruckeberg wrote a great review of this type of community in his California Serpentines: Flora and his Geology and Plant Life. I also found reference to this tolerance vs. obligation in Anderson's Savannas, Barrens and Rock Outcrops of North America.

I have positively identified D. calcicola seed that when grown in soil with DG, looking more like D. setchelli then anything else. There is so much morphological variation in the genus that tons of lumping has been occurring, so by the time something is written, someone has lumped them all together - i.e., D. farinosa (D. eastwoodii et al) and D. caespitosa. The whole D. cymosa group is getting lumped and split time and time again.

I would agree with you more that it has the outward appearance of D. cymosa, but does not look like the pics and plants I have grown from field collected seed of D. c. cymosa from the southern Sierras and north of Lake Isabella. We even found a few specimens enroute to Ridgecrest amongst the very southern edge of the range and more around Lone Pine. Neither area is listed as having dudleya.

Thanks for the feedback. I hope the community opens its eyes up to the wonderful world of dudleya (the original California Echeverias)

[Kelly Griffin]

Well, I must say you have studied the genus. Have you seen the pierpoint springs Dudleya? It is so different in both flower and form. Very cool plant. I have seen so many little and big forms of cymosas every color of flower and wide range of leaf forms.....yes very easy to see splitting and lumping and usually directly related to the amount of field work done work. I think the lumping occurs behind desks often without much hiking involved.