Ernie, a good tribute to Roy who introduced several new cultivars during the life of Whitestone Gardens.

However, FYI and apologies for my pedantry, but the correct parentage of Sedum 'Sandra Mottram' is now: Sedum lucidum 'Obese' x S. treleasei.

I have 3 bloodspots at different stages of flowering at the moment. These are all from different sources, and as i only had enough agave pollen to cross the first plant, I thought it would be fun to try a little experiment. I have collected pollen from the first plant, using it to pollinate the sec...

I've flowered many aeoniums over the years and have never had post-flowering branching like this. This is very different to an agave that produces bulbils on the flower spike, where the bulbils look very different to the normal rosette. Usually what happens with an aeonium is that the flower spike d...

This has been a bumper year for flowering agaves here and this is the fourth plant to flower. This plant is an old timer. For three years it lived outdoors in Bedfordshire where it graced our front door stop in a wooden trough. To move it north it was repotted into a plastic pan which 5+ years on th...

For information, my understanding is that there will be no public funeral for Roy but simply a very private non-religious family gathering.

Here are my pics from the CW article. Tina, you raised these three plants from seed supplied by an American contact. Fig 1.jpg Notice the spots on these young seedlings, which disappear as the seedlings age. This happens in many spp. Fig 2.jpg Fig 3.JPG Fig 4.JPG This inflorescence was 72 cm tall. F...

Well done Mike for getting this sp. to flower. I've only achieved this once myself and written this event up as a CW article ages ago. This sp. is one of only about 20 out of the c. 550 aloe spp. that have hairy/hirsute/tomentose flowers. Some of the others have names that relate to this hairiness s...

Thanks Tom and Paul. Steve - I did wonder about your idea, but ruled it out due to lack of "stringy bits" on the edge of the leaves. Thanks. Colin - if you read this, I'm sure you will be able to tell us the correct jargon for "stringy bits". Well Ralph, these "stringy bits...

Roy had a huge input into the world of succulents in general and the BCSS in particular and I leave it to others to recall his input and achievements which are numerous and varied. Part of his life's work was the was the development of the Whitestone Library. I can report that this has been transfer...

I'm sorry to be the bearer of very sad news, but Roy Mottram passed away earlier today. I'll send some more details later.