BCSS Southampton & District Branch October 2018 Newsletter Branch Secretary Newsletter EditorPage 1 British Cactus & Succulent Society David Neville Vinay Shah 6 Parkville Road 29 Heathlands Road Swaythling Eastleigh Southampton & District Branch Southampton Hampshire Newsletter Hampshire SO53 1GU SO16 2JA [email protected] [email protected] October 2018 (023) 80551173 or (023) 80261989 07974 191354 Portsmouth Branch ’s Autumn Show will be held th Editorial ........................................................... 1 this coming Saturday (6 October) at Widley. Announcements ............................................... 1 Details are on their website and David Neville can Last Month’s Meeting ..................................... 2 email a pdf of the show schedule on request. Plants of Interest ................................................... 2 Succulent Senecios ............................................... 2 The Autumn South East Cactus Mart will be held Table Show Results .............................................. 6 at the Village Hall, Church Lane, Crockham Hill, th Next Month’s Meeting .................................... 6 Edenbridge TN8 6RP on Sunday October 14 , between 10am and 3pm. Entry to the event will cost Forthcoming Events ........................................ 6 £2. There will be plant sales (over a dozen sellers) and an auction will be held around lunchtime, where Editorial anyone can sell anything related to the hobby, such Compared to earlier in the year, September was as plants, books or pots. No commission will be relatively normal, with a mix of sunshine and rain. charged, but sellers will be required to pay a fee of There were actually some pretty nice summer days £1 per auction entry. Buyers will need to pay in cash to be enjoyed. Of course the days are getting shorter after each auction. and there’s a chill in the air on some days. th Oxford Branch are holding a special 60 Anniversary Celebration Symposium on Sunday My conservatory should get rebuilt later this month st and that will involve moving all the plants out into 21 October, with plant sales and 4 speakers : Colin the garden and then waiting 2-3 days for the builders Walker, Martin Lowry, Paul Hoxey and Ian to do their work. I am hoping that there won’t any Woolnough. £15 covers the cost of entry and a severe weather or cold spells during that time! buffet lunch and refreshments, details are available at: https://tinyurl.com/OxfordSymp Announcements The Branch Annual dinner will be held at 7:30pm I am sad to report that Jim Roskilly passed away on the evening of Friday 12 th October, at the usual four days after our September meeting – he had venue – the Luzborough - which is situated between been unwell and was in hospital. Jim joined the North Baddesley and Romsey. Please let Robin branch in the 1970s and hence was a member for Caddy know if you would like to attend. A map is over 40 years - he also served on the Branch available on the front table. committee for over 30 years. He supported our shows, grew many fine plants and I remember The BCSS had a problem with the distribution of visiting his collection when he held open days. More the September Journal - a large number of recently, ill health made him give up his collection members were missed from the mailing, and copies and prevented him from attending our meetings, but were sent to ex-members or to old addresses. A thanks to Ivor he did manage to attend a couple of substantial number of Journals had to be reprinted times during the last 2 years. and members who have not yet received their copy should expect to receive them by October 9 th . Last month, the Branch put on a display and plant sales at Romsey Show . Ivor, Bruce, Dot, Ben and September 30 th marks the end of the Branch’s Alice attended and it proved to be a successful financial year. Please let Alice have details of any event, with good weather and keen interest from the bills payable or funds received during the year. public and apparently plant sales were good. Our Also, as mentioned previously, the library’s fee for display also won a Gold Medal. borrowing books increases to 30p/month from this month onwards. There are a number of events being held over the next three weekends: BCSS Southampton & District Branch October 2018 Newsletter Page 2 Last Month’s Meeting dahlia, chrysanthemum, zinnia, sunflower, daisy and dandelion. Plants of Interest All these diverse plants are united by their flower Miranda Stevenson mentioned that she had been structure. The flower is a composite flower head experimenting with growing various plants outdoors made up of lots of tiny flower heads or florets. and she had brought along some pictures of these These are of two types - disc florets, and ray florets plants. At the end of her garden she has a scree bed which look like petals. Some flowers only have disc which consists of soil and grit on top of an air raid florets and these are common for Senecio. Others shelter, and this was well drained and suitable for have a combination of disc and ray florets, for growing plants. The plants she had tried included example with daisy or sunflower. Others only have Yuccas, Agaves and a Dasylirion. ray florets – for example, dandelion. The composite flower head lead to the name Compositae, although We saw Yucca linearifolia in flower in 2016. The Asteraceae is the more current name these days. main crown had continued to grow after flowering, and a side crown has also appeared. Nolina Moving on to books, John showed us the “bible” - longifolia flowered this year and she wasn’t sure Gordon Rowley’s book titled Succulent Compositae . what it will do next, but it shouldn’t die after Gordon covered two genera - Senecio and Othonna - flowering. Agave montana is a plant she has been and did not distinguish any other genera. Kleinia is growing for a number of years. She covers it in sometimes considered a different genus from gauze during the winter months, using fleece is too Senecio, but the book Noteworthy Species of Kleinia humid. It was now ½ metre across. With tree by P Halliday notes just very minor differences in Yuccas, she also puts some gauze around those. the flower – this book contains some line drawings of the plants. Unfortunately modern DNA research Fascicularia bicolor is a bromeliad and we saw a has come up with a few new distinctions, so Kleinia picture of it in flower taken last year – it also has re-appeared as a good genus, along with other flowered this year. The centre of the plant becomes genera such as Curio and Caputia. The trend seems red when it flowers. It seems to be pretty hardy. to be to move all the succulent Senecios out to other With Fascicularia pitcarnifolia , she lost that, so genera, so perhaps in a few years, John might have now she keeps that in a pot which can be put out in nothing to talk about! He said he wasn’t going to the summer but brought in for the winter. Yucca talk about the Othonnas - these are mainly winter gloriosa is quite hardy but it does die after growers, and mainly caudiciforms or geophytes. flowering, so she will take off the offsets which They tend to be expensive and rare, and not many form and grow those on for a couple of years. There people grow them. was also a Dasylirion at the back of the picture. Senecios are very varied - some are winter growers, Plants of Agave americana were newly planted out some are summer growers and some will grow at for this year in a raised bed. They had grown very any time. John asked how many people grow “10 or well, and she will protect them with gauze over the more?” I’m not sure any hands went up. Next he winter. asked “5 or more?” A couple of hands went up. A Succulent Senecios few more hands went up when he asked “1 or more?”. He pointed out Senecio articulatus , which Richard White introduced John Foster, who was the is quite a popular species to grow and one that Ben chairman of Gloucester Branch and also the Zone 9 had brought in at the sales table, and said he hoped representative. John said it was wonderful to see that by the end of the evening, we would all want to such a large audience assembled for the talk. He was grow more of them. A person in the audience asked going to talk about the succulent Senecios and had “Where can we buy them?” He would talk about brought along a large selection of plants which were that later. arranged at the front, to illustrate the main members of the genus. Senecio belongs in the Asteraceae There are 1500-2000 species of Senecio, and they family, which is also known as the Compositae. It is grow everywhere except the Antarctic. Senecio one of the largest families of flowering plants. Most vulgaris is the type species and he mentioned he are non-succulent and you probably have some actually saw this growing in the churchyard earlier growing in your gardens. Lettuce, chicory, that evening! There are around 50-80 succulent artichoke, chamomile and tarragon are examples, ones, and these come mainly from Southern Africa, and in the flower garden this extends to marigold, also Madagascar, East Africa, Arabia, Morocco, India, and the Canaries. There are also some semi- succulent tree Senecios from Mexico. Overall, there BCSS Southampton & District Branch October 2018 Newsletter Page 3 are very diverse forms and some plants have which look like a nasturtium. There is another one succulent leaves or succulent stems, and lots have called ssp.