Albuca 'Augrabies Hills'

Hannon othonna@gmail.com
Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:11:42 PDT
Dear Dietrich,

Thank you for your welcome input. So we can say this is *Albuca polyphylla*,
wherever it may be from?

Here are some notes that may help sort the cultivated material of this
species in the U.S.:

I received plants from Arid Lands Greenhouses (Chuck Hanson) in 1999. Chuck
told me they were grown from seed collected, or originally collected, in
the Aughrabies Hills. I did not learn who the collector was. I believe this
nursery is likely the source of this locality being associated with this
plant. The locality is definitely a real place well known to succulent
collectors, a low set of hills near the Orange River that looks very arid
but harbors a number of interesting dwarf succulents, including Tylecodon
and Conophytum:

http://cactuspro.com/conophytum-lithops/in-situ/…

Previously, in 1994, I had obtained from Michael Vassar a very similar
plant that he collected near Dysselsdorp under his number MV 4442. More
recently, the Huntington Botanical Gardens through its ISI program offered
the same plant as "Albuca longipes":

http://huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/ISI2007/…

This is also a Michael Vassar collection but from nearby Willowmore and
under a different number. Both the Huntington and myself got plants and
data directly from Michael so I suspect they are two different collections
of the same species. He often made such "close" collections of Oxalis. The
name A. longipes in this case is incorrect since A. longipes does not
cluster (to speak of), has underground white bulbs, only a few, much
longer, brittle, channeled leaves, and different flowers with a much
different fragrance. Some sense of the floral differences can be gleaned
from the PBS wiki photos.

It could be the case that "Aughrabies Hills" is simply an erroneous
locality for the plant we are growing. At this point its precise origin
must be regarded as dubious. If it does occur there then it may exist as a
voucher (specimen) in a South African herbarium. Whatever the case I am
happy to finally have a name for this delightful plant.

Dylan Hannon
Los Angeles

2012/3/25 Dietrich Müller-Doblies <d.mueller-doblies@gmx.de>

> Dear Pamela,
> Where do you know from that your plant Albuca 'Augrabies Hills' is from
> "the northwest Cape near the southeastern Namibian border" as you state
> on the Albuca Wiki? There are in the usual gazetteers several Augrabies
> in "the northwest Cape near the southeastern Namibian border" such as
> Augrabies Falls, and Augrabies East & Augrabies West near Springbok but
> no Augrabies Hills. Is there perhaps an Augrabies Hills in the Eastern
> Cape?
> Roy Herold is absolutely right: "albuca seeds I collected in 2008 in
> Uniondale produced plants that are identical to A. Augrabies Hills." My
> wife Ute cultivates Albuca polyphylla since 35 years from many (more
> than 24) localities in the Eastern Cape and the eastern part of the
> Western Cape.
> Our first plants from Bathurst collected by R.D. Bayliss in DEC. 1977
> are still alive in the Botanical Garden of Berlin, thus indeed rather
> hardy.
> Kind regards
> Dietrich
>
>



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