I made a “Surprise” ebay purchase recently when I found a nice looking truncata going well under the normal purchase price.  I ended up bidding against automatic bids a bit more than I originally intended (only by about $10) and ended up winning! Not a plant I was intending to get so soon, but one that was on my wishlist.

I was a bit nervous after some miscommunication with the seller resulted in them shipping it on the worst possible day (on a Friday, with delivery to my office which is closed on the weekend, when we had three inches of snow) but it appeared to have made it through the shipping not too worse for the wear.  It’s a nicely formed plant, with a very vigorous root system (not a freshly rooted offset, happily) and I was quite pleased when I opened it.

I immediately got it potted up, with the assumption that the shipping time was likely enough time for the roots to callous if necessary.

It’s still waiting for its first drink, but this means it can join the haworthia collection which has mostly moved upstairs to a windowsill for some indirect summer sun.  The most recent potting, the retusa, was already showing some slightly darkening of color since I moved it into a taller pot and it was closer to the basement lights – but upon inspection tonight, it also has two brand new offsets coming in.

This means I’m currently at 16 haworthias.  I have a few repeats (two varieties of nigras, two truncata x maughanii that are slightly different in leaf shape, and two cooperi truncatas…. and while a few, like the nigras, the truncata x maughanii and the turgida are still babies, it’s a pretty nice variety.

The saddest note is that I lost both flower stalks on the coarctata this past week when they bent and broke, and now it looks like the flower stalks on the venosa are suffering the same fate.  Both plants made very tall, but thin stalks – the limifola still has a tall stalk that’s much sturdier, so I don’t know if that’s related to the plant variety or the age/health of the plant.  It looks like this year won’t be too tempting to try my hand at creating hybrids given that I keep losing stalks before blossoming, but it’s another thing to research and experiment with.

If you look closely at the truncata, you’ll notice it also has two flower stalks just starting to peek out of the center.  So maybe I’ll get another try!