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Re: Huntington visit

Hello all, and welcome Darrel,

I recently returned from a trip to Los Angeles, where I visitd the Huntington
Botanical Garden.  I spent the day with John Trager (curator of succulent
plants) and Norma Lewis going over the Sansevieria collection, and doing my
best to help clear up some identity questions. They have recently acquired a
large number of plants from the Alice Waidhoffer collection which arrived
with all kinds of odd nicknames.  Some ID's were obvious; some just needed
updating; others were just my best educated guess.  I must say that the
botanical as well as the anecdotal information I've picked up from this forum
has helped me a lot.  I warned them that I may just be perpetuating
long-standing errors, but at least they now have another opinion to add to
the fray.  Some of the plants now have as many as three different labels in
them.  In a few cases, I was only able to say what the plant was NOT.  Only
time will tell what some of the real identities of some of these plants are.

I was able to re-identify one plant that had lost its label, solely because
John had given me an offset from it many years ago and I recognized it. So it
is useful for the plants to be in the hands of several growers who can keep
cross-references.

The Huntington does have an enormous and diverse collection, including some
really special plants and some things collected more recently which I had
never seen or heard of before.  Some standouts include a dramatic broad
leaved variety with virtually no petiole collected in Tanzania by Barad (HBG
# 55593).  This resembles a plant I collected myself in Tanzania, which I am
provisionally calling raffillii. Another interesting one is a Downs
collection from Malawi which is a short, thick, and spikey rosette and
produces amazing, fat, aerial stolons (HBG # 65342).  They are propagating
some of their plants like crazy, which they sell wholesale or at their own
plant sales.  Still, there are a few gaps in the collection, and I will be
sending them some plants from among my own specimens to fill in some of the
holes.

The sp. Chahinian # 15 which has been under discussion appears to be a clone
of S. parva (or dooneri) with distinctive dark purple rhizomes.  It seems to
be pretty vigorous.

John was very generous in sharing many choice plants with me, including the
aforementioned ones and some expensive variegates.

There was not time to go through the index card files as we spent all of our
time with the actual plants.  But I'll be reviewing them on my next visit,
and John has promised to send me an accession list to get started with.

I urge any of you who can to go visit the Huntington Botanical Garden.  It is
a beautiful facility, and something of a mecca for sansevieriaophiles.
Surrounded by all those interesting plants, I was happy as the proverbial pig
in s##t!

While in California, I also paid a visit to Grigsby's Cactus Gardens.  They
are growing some very beautiful sansevierias, including many of the Lavranos
collections of the robusta, rorida, ehrenbergii group.  One especially
lovely, distichous, powdery blue form is Lav. 54769 (aff. ehrenbergii) from
Somalia  (GC #86-17).  They have propagated some pups, and even though they
are not yet for sale, Madelyn did part with one for me (for a price!!).
There was also a mature powelli which had flowered (branched inflorescence)
and was producing seeds

The majority of their variegated masonianas seem to be reverting to the plain
type.  They have a lot of very nice 'Forescate' under production, and lots of
eilensis ( a very chubby clone which Madelyn has developed a special
proprietary method of propagating....she wouldn't tell me how). They also had
a few plants of a variegated dawei which she would not sell (they aren't
producing), and a fair amount of variegated trifasciata X desertii which they
must be saving for future release.

There is no doubt that Grigsby's grows beautiful sansevierias.  My feeling is
that they are also very proud of them and a little bit stingy with them.  But
I suppose they are entitled, if that keeps their market strong. I think their
plants are often expensive, but generally worth it.

That's the report from Southern California!

Regards,
Kirk
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