Bradleya

Have been looking through the list of subjects for this years Bradleya yearbook in this quarters journal.  There is a few new things there that are quite interesting to me as well as a few things that are obscure enough for this blog of sorts.

For one a brief bit of history about Bradleya, its our cactus yearbook as I've already said, but also is much, much more technical than regular issue of Cactus world and for one about 4 times as thick.

If you like taxonomy and have the requisite smarts to work out the obtuse botanical language used (seriously, there's quite a few technical papers here detailing new discoveries) then its for you.  For the most of you, its not gonna be worth it to be honest.

First up is Cremnocereus a cliff dwelling cactus from Bolivia.  Quite odd flowering on this one, reminds me of some of the other short flowered Cereus types (believe its bat pollinated too). It does look quite impressive growing on a cliff face as well.

 I've read a little bit of the article via issu and its quite good.  Mostly its stuff on Crassulaceae with a few parts on Kalanchoe and some more on the taxonomy of the money plant (Crassula Argentea and Ovata). And some stuff on Tylecodon too including a new species.

As a mesemb man myself, there are a few articles to kickstart the old almonds.  Leaf structure in Conophytums, a treatise on the hypothesis of the evolutionary origin and polymorphism of Lithops (you see why we keep these in Bradleya now).

But mostly what I'm interested in is a new genus from the Western Cape called Roosia.  There's no information on line about it.  It sounds like it was part of the super group Ruschia (if you were a pink flowered and shrubby mesemb, chances are you were placed there) and split off when it was given a taxonomic revision.  As I don't have access to it I'll just have to troll around the net to see if anything is posted about it.  Ironically the only Bradleya I do have is the big taxonomic revision of Ruschia itself done by Heidi Hartmann.  If I ever get to read this I will post an update...

EDIT 2018.

What a difference a year makes? This article details just what Roosia was and indeed is.  Short version is, it wasn't a Ruschia at all but in fact, part of Esterhuysenia instead. Looks quite nice as well.