Rhadamanthus germination
Roy Herold (Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:33:32 PDT)

Linda,

I brought back some Rhadamanthus seed from South Africa last November
that I collected in a nursery, as opposed to in the wild. Late spring
there, obvously. I sowed them in the usual way (gritty soil mix, cover
with grit) in April (early spring here, breaking all the rules) and they
germinated quickly, in a week as I recall.

They have grown happily all summer with no signs of wanting to go
dormant. LOTS of water and rainfall have not bothered them. Even the
slugs ignored them. They never put up more than a single skinny leaf,
however. Now I wonder what they will do this fall/winter in the
greenhouse. It will be nice if I can get a year long growing season
without having them go dormant.

One other note: the wiki note states that they come from the
Richtersveld and Namaqualand. In fact they are much more widespread. The
ISI selection from a while back comes from near DeRust in the Little
Karoo, a good 400 miles from the Richtersveld. The aforementioned seeds
that I planted were marked as having come from Calitzdorp (another
Little Karoo locality) and Caledon, which is getting even closer to the
south coast and has much more rainfall.

Off topic, I also brought back some Whiteheadia bifolia (aka Massonia)
seeds from South Africa. When I visited Kirstenbosch, Ernst van
Jaarsveld was kind enough to offer me seeds, knowing my interest in
massonia. I expected him to pull out a seed packet, but instead we went
upstairs in the conservatory. He proceeded to jump over the glass into
one of the display beds, and found a dried out seed head. Sadly, there
were only TWO seeds remaining. I wasn't expecting much when I finally
got around to planting them three weeks ago, but they both germinated in
about five days. The fresher massonia seed that I planted at the same
time are just sitting there.

--Roy
NW of Boston