"So goodbye yellow brick road...I´m going back to my plow..."

This is my plow!
Those are Dyckia seeds just sown.
I´d rather sew one by one the seeds than springle them.
This way I avoid they sticking togetther. When the seedlings are touching one another it will
be time to replant them. Dyckia seedling do enjoy replantings.
This is a curious thing they just love to get transfered every three to four months.
Transfered seedlings get twice as big as those left alone and isolated.
The upper seeds are almost germinating, they are swollen and the
seeds below were just sown.
Ah, all here are Dyckia marnier-lapostollei seeds.
I am waiting for some just super and hipper Dream ones.

Dyckia donafranciscae

Dyckia donafranciscae is a proposal for name.

This plant is native to Santa Catarina Northeastern Uphills close to Joinville.
It is a very colorful Dyckia.

It has long narrow leaves edged with very harsh spines.
Maybe a Dyckia fosteriana affinis, maybe.
The closest Dyckia fosteriana known Habitat is 200 hundred
kilometers North in a straight line.

An extreme flat Dream Dyckia fosteriana

This is flat!
This breathtaking plant is no more that five centimeters or two inches high.
What induces a plant to assume this form?
This form of crown like seem to be a gene determined phenotype.
Some Dyckias fosterianas due assume this appearance and some have leaves curved or arched upwards. We say this is one more intriguing Dyckia secret and one of their most
beautiful masks.
This specimen took this too serious. Here it was under light rain.

Dyckia fosteriana type form blooming by the first time

This is the type Dyckia fosteriana native to Passo do Pupo in Paraná.
It is one of the six seeds found there in leftover of a out of season seed pod.
This was in February 2006 during our summer time and fosterianas bloom in late winter or early spring from August to October.
Dyckias fosteriana do have some varieties all native to Paraná Center East.
Dyckia fosteriana robustior grows on a high mountain close to the sea and it is bigger an much less silver scaled.
Dyckia fosteriana grow within a territory that is a leftover of a ancient Cerrado similar to the one of Central Brazil.
So, this is the look of a true Dyckia fosteriana the same plant described, the original type form.
This plant seldom sprouts and reproduction is seed made and as Dyckias are sex maniacs most of the plants we see as Dyckia fosteriana is not that. Some are not even close to.
Dyckia fosteriana are extremely beautiful plants.

Dyckia fosteriana type

This species has a heavy coat of silver/white scales
that is easily removed by heavy rain or hosing.

Dyckia dusenii

Dyckia dusenii
Specimens from Northeastern Santa Catarina are colored in a most variety hues of green and olive also with or without silver dusting. Meanwhile all Dyckia dusenii plants have their center well coated in silver scales.

Dyckia hybrid Brevifoster (Dyckia brevifolia X Dyckia fosteriana

This plant is a small Hybrid.
It fits well on your one hand of yours. a gracious plant.
This plant is four years old and it has not bloomed yet.
The perfect plant for the sunny windowsill during those snowy winters.

Dyckia braunii

Dyckia braunii
This Cerrado gem is impressing and rare.
It is very succulent ad its silver scales are tiny.

Dyckia monticola flower

Bees are one of the major pollinator agent to Dyckias.
Ants seems to be also a very important one.
A bee is capable of flying 5000 meters away from its hive when looking for flowers.
Dyckia pollen are not good enough to be spread by the wind.
Dyckias rely on living creatures to produce their seeds.

Note this quite impressing Dyckia flowers some are already fertilized.
Flores while not fertilised are turned downward.
This is to avoid water getting into the flowers and wetting the pollen turning it useless.
After being fertilised the flowers turn upwards and close its petals.
The petals do not get loose and accompany the formation of the fruits.
They just get dry. The old flower petals keep on protecting the ovary and the tender young unripe fruit.

Dyckia retroflexa

This species has half the spines curved inerwardly hense the name retroflexa or flexed backward. This also a big plant which flowers are yellow.

Dyckia sp from Caxias do Sul - Rio Grande do Sul

This plant is well armed with black-blueish harsh spines.
This plants presents a big number of leaves lending a deeply concentric and compact look.
The yellow flowers are numerous and very small and the seeds are very small and seed bird like.
Now please, click on the image and say wow!

Dyckia sp Northeastern Santa Catarina

This plant is similar in some aspects to the plant in the prior post.
This is a smaller and more compact plant also much succulent.
Its silver dusting is more intense and the scales are much smaller.
It flowers are yellow and very big and the flower spike is a short one.
This is a very beautiful and rare plant.

Dyckia sp from Northeast Santa Catarina

This is A Dyckia species yet to be described and named.
presents a very tin line edging the leaves. This line is silvery.
Flores are intense red.
This is a beautiful plant wit a dusting of silver all over it and turns int a
nice coat in the center of the rosette.

Dyckia goehringii a wonderful plant with a drab graceless flower

Dyckia goehringii and its flowers.

Cerrado plant normally bewares very unattractive flowers. They barely open a hole
on top of the flower buds. This is an attempt to protect the feminine parts of the flower.
Cerrado air humidity may be less that that of the Sahara and marks below 20% are all too frequent. This is the reason for such flowering attitude.
Cerrado is a huge area in Central Brazil from which many of the most beautiful Dyckias come.
It is quite similar to a African Savanna. Cerrado is home for Cacti, succulents, bromeliads, orchids and an endless array of beauties. Some plants are so specialized to determined micro climate within the Cerrado area there is no way to remove any with success from there, not even their seeds, This happens is Australia and some parts of Africa.
If one wants to see the plant alive must risk the neck and face wilderness.
Dyckias from The Cerrado take ages and ages to get acclimatized to our Southern conditions and one have to have not just a green finger but an all green soul and mind too.
They may challenge the very skilled gardener to the limit.

Dyckia juliana

Dyckia juliana

This is a plant from the Gaucho Dyckia Triangle Complex.
This species grow very chse to big population of Dyckia hebdingii and sure enough it is a
Dyckia hebdingii related.
During harsh toimes it gets pinkish red all over.
A very beautiful plant!

Dyckia alba

Dyckia alba


Dyckia alba and Dyckia ursina are the only two Dyckia species to present
a cotton like structure among their flowers.
Bothshould have got much better and significant valid names. Alba is a name used when a plant present paler or white flowers and belong tho a very same species that bears darker normal flowers. For instance Dyckia fosteriana alba would be the name of a variety of Dyckia fosteriana with white or paler colored flowers. ( This does not exist or was not found yet.)
This baby here has no white flowers and no paler than any.
This is a name suited for a variety and not a species.
But..... remember taxonomist got their spouses hat appendices to classify a bird they insisted to be refugees from paradise and had no foot and also the female hatched their eggs on the male´d bach ´cause they were ever on flying....Pardisea apoda.
Dyckia ursina have the same cotton structure among its flowers only chestnut colored and science took it as very similar to the bear fur. Ursina is Latim for like a bear.
Maby science has never saw a bear or was all too imaginative here.

That is what Dyckias and company are for:

Neophytum and Dyckia fosteriana

Do you ever saw or had the disgusting opportunity to visit
those withe leghorn hens in a modern poultry? Those eggs factories?
Each half a dozen miserable creatures inside their tiny cage...
I am sure you won´t eat any egg no more unless your heart is made of stone.
Horrifying to say the least!
Something quite similar happens to me when I see hundreds of Rare and beautiful Dyckias
Confined to those miserable small black plastic pots.
The very same sensation when you visit a poultry... once you have sen one you saw all...
Dyckia are for this...for the pleasure of ones heart and feat for the eyes.
It is not just a matter of keeping but showing.
Healthy happy plants transmit to us their vigor, fill our hearts with beauty.
That is what our plants are fore.
Otherwise why to be named ornamentals?
An ornamental plant must be Gorgeous, happy, healthy by the plenty!

Dyckia sp from Entrepelados in Rio Grande do Sul

This big Dyckia species is one of the most harsh and fiercely armed of all
Dyckias. It won´t have mercy and will ever try to remove your skin in a whole
single piece.
It turns into an explendorous plant in harsh Summers.
It gets red, silver and blue centered plant and a sight you would never forget.

Dyckia sp from São Marcos-RS

São Marcos is another giant Dyckia species from South.
Colorful, immense, blue/silver colored.
Here sensing Spring is in the next corner.

Dyckia Spider Witch a Dyckia chorestaminea and Dyckia Dawsoni American hybrid

No, this is not a Dyckia dawsoni. It is just half Dyckia dawsoni.
The other half is Dyckia chorestamina. Innature this two species would never met.
They are aprt from eachother for more the 3.000 kilometers.

Here we have atypical case where union makes the force.
One single plant is not impressive but a clump with many is a show and no xeric garden is
a vision of the Eden without a clump of it. It blooms in a most abundant extravaganza.
There are reports showing clumps with more than 200 flower stems in South California
in United Sates of America. This cause a hummingbird frenzy. Xeric gardens are too much common in that region and also
stimulated in order not to waste the precious Colorado River waters.
Remember the song that says : it never rains in Southern California.... a hit in early 70´s.

This plant gets much more colored with the summer blue skies.
Here it is listening to the knocks of Lady Spring on my gardens door.

Dyckia excelsa

Dyckia excelsa
A big wonderful plant and a perfect name!
Native to a mountain close to Cuiaba in Mato Grosso.
This plant lives on almost bare rocks and the intire population
has been threatened by orchid lovers.
Yes, orchid lovers known as orchidiots!
They use the Excelsa trunks to cultivate a certain orchid and this
is exterminating this wonderful plant.
Here taxonomy was brilliant and extremely illuminated.
Excelsa means exalted, lofty.

Another giant from South: Dyckia sp Ponte do costa. Piratini - RS

This giant comes from close to Ponte do Costa in Piratini, Rio Grande do sul.
A charming historical town.
It can get rosettes with more than 2 meters in diameter.
This is not big, this is huge!
One of the purple centered Dyckias from The extreme Brazilian South.
It can get reddish and densely silver coated in harsh weather conditions.

Big, Bold and Beautiful this is Dyckia encholirioides for sure.

Dyckia encholirioides is made to impress, fulfil ones eyes and
an entire garden.
This is no kid´s play!
Blooms with a broom stick thick flower stalk.
Trunks may get as thick as soccer player thigh.
Impressive! Here below you may see the preparations for the blooming
in early Spring.

Dyckiasp - Piratini

This impressive species may get all red and silver in very dry summer times.

This Dyckia species is just breathtakingly beautiful.
Imponent and colorful may get all red/silverd with a purple center.
Purple centered Dyckias are all native to Rio Grande do Sul.

Dyckia delicata

Dyckia delicata rubra form
This is for sure one of the most striking of all Dyckias also one of the rarest
Dyckias in any place on Earth.
The botton picture shows the rubra form on the right.
This impressive plant looks like a nest of needles.

This is my thank you to all members of The Bromeliad Sciety of San Franisco California.

Thank you all.

Ah, To be where little cable cars climb half way to the sky...
My love waits there... in San Francisco high on hill...





Thank you
Beauty lays within all ot us who care...
Thank you for you most kind words and the gesture of linking this blog
to the page of yours.
Constantino

Dyckia fosteriana nivosa

Dyckia fosteriana var. nivosa

Click to enlarge and you will see snow on it...

...to say beautiful is too few, to little.

Dyckia brevifolia var. subidensis

Dyckia brevifolia var. subidensis

Subida is A locality close to Ibirama a small charming Town of the Itajaí River Valley.
Subida (climbing) is where the river jumps trought a narrow gorge from The High Valley to the Medium Valley. There we have lots of populations of Dyckia brevifolia. There is a particular one
where half the individuals are lemon colored and are a bit bigger than the normal common plants and also the flowers a of a paler shade of yellow.
This variety is not described yet.
Some descent of a population of Dyckia Ilha da Cotia some kilometers upstream
bear this shade of pale green.
The Rio Itajaí-açu Valley is one of the most beautiful places in Santa Catarina.