Buying plants at the Sunday market and I show you my Haworthiopsis limifolia

I woke up this morning intending to go to the local flea market to look for taps for the kitchen but it's been rainy and the market is open-air so there weren't many traders and I couldn't find any taps. The bad weather didn't deter the plant sellers though so I came home with new succulents instead.

Katia investigates

Lewisiana species, native to the Northwest Pacific area of the USA was named after the explorer Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame. A close-up of the flowers:

Although labelled as "full sun" in their country of origin, these will need shade in my climate. But I can forget to water them and that's handy.

I also got a plant I have been looking for for a while: Haworthiopsis limifolia ubomboensis.

Yes, that is a mouthful but all you need to know is that it's a variant of Fairy Washboards that comes from the Ubombo mountains in Swaziland. This is the only one of the species that doesn't look like a washboard although all of the others do. Most people know these "miniature aloes" as Haworthia because they have small white flowers, unlike the large red flowers of the Aloe family. In the age of genetic sequencing, the Haworthia that are mostly found in the Eastern side of Southern Africa were renamed Haworthiopsis because they were considered to have sufficient genetic variation to the plants found mainly on the Western side. It's also true that these plants cannot easily by hybridised whereas they hybridise more readily with other species that don't appear related, such as Gasteria

Fairy washboards show huge variation as you can see, these are limifolia variant limifolia:

This is limifolia variant striata, as you can see, variations in the growth form and colours here too

If you've read this far, you may ask yourself why have so many different kinds. The answer to that is mainly that you can never have just one. But also that I want to do a little hybridisation of my own. Although most people know and like Haworthia hybrids, Haworthiopsis are extremely attractive to my eyes.

Any Sunday you get new plants is a beautiful Sunday in my world