MSG Bulletin 20(4) Review

First article after traditional editorial is Mark Border's comment to photos of his plants. Two flowers of Trichodiadema decorum are compared on first photo—one was grown outdoors, and another under glass. There is Stoeberia carpii with translucent “mini-windows” on the second photo.

Second article is first part of “Lithopsarian recollections” by Desmond Cole. He describes one of his first journeys with Ernst Fritz.

Several letters were dedicated to discussion of Lithops gesinae/gesineae issue. ... Anyway, most agree that it depends on what kind of his wife's name—original or Latinized—de Boer used.

David Vivers writes about two interesting cases: seven-month old Lithops seedlings resent -6°C without any sign damage; package of seeds was left in a car where temperature in summer raised up to +70°C, and germination rate of these seeds later was 50%. In his another article David writes about photographing mesembs with his new digital camera.

Johan du Toit also wrote two articles. First one is a short note to photo of Conophytum reconditum subsp. bysiana colony growing in fissure between rocks. Second one describes botanic examination of Marlienshoop and Rooival farms, where gibbaeums, conophytums and other plants were found. There are some photos too.

Steven Hammer writes about his Conophytum research and good news about his health.

At bottom of same page is short note about Lithops cultivars on color plate on the opposite page.

But most interesting articles of the issue are “An Introduction to Mesemb morphologies” by Didge Rowe and “The Climates of Southern Africa” by Ian Nartowicz (both are well known as active participants of MESEMBS group at Yahoo). Didge wrote some kind of review of whole Mesembryanthemaceae family, describing most striking and unusual genus and species.

Ian Nartowicz collected and processed geographical and meteorological data about Southern Africa. The article is accompanied by map where areas of RSA and Namibia are shown, and monthly charts of average temperature and rainfall at different parts of the region. You can see the images at Ian's web site.