Aug 12, 2012

From santa Catarina Northeast uphills...beautifull or dazzling gorgeous?



Super, super colorful and outrageous beautiful and new.
...and species!
Dyckias in Brazil, we barely just began to see some of them.
Our science kept secret of them as we had sad and bad experiences with our orchids
 and recently with our cacti  and I can not blame it.
Some of our most beautiful natives bear almost unpronounceable names.
Names that mean nothing or less than that.




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Dyckia discoides
This marvel is native to Santa Catarina South Midwest.
It is still under observation and description and its habitat, a rock mountain, belongs to a State Reserve.
One of the most spectacular Dyckias and also a multi leafed one. Flowers in thousands of tiny yellow flowers and its seeds are very, very small.
Very close related to Dyckia magnifica another under description Santa Catarina native to Dyckia.



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An Amazonian Dyckia species



This is a smal plant and a very colorful one.
It was found up North In Mato Grosso close to the city of Cólider.
This is a warm loving plant and I am making fine hybrids from it using  our spectacular
Southern marvel the brevifolia in search  of the red brevifolia.



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Aug 11, 2012

Dyckia beateae



Dyckia beateae



...a dream plant , no doubt.
 
 



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Dyckia retzii rubra X Dyckia sp from Campo Alegre-SC
Two Southern Dyckia species got together to make this small beauty here.









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Two new and undescribed Dyckia species from Rio Grande do Sul


Dyckia sp Itacolumi from Vale Verde, Taquari-RS
 

Dyckia sp from Lagoão-RS and Dyckia sp Itacolumi.
 

Here you can see the beginning of a triad. This will be a three heads plant.
 


I like those potteries. They are hand made old fashioned way of working with clay.
I favor these pots as here in Joinville we have a great big deal of humidity.

 
 




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Dyckia sp Itacolumi, Vale Verde, Taquari-RS



This is an extra rare plant native to Rio Grade do Sul and still to be named.
Here it is  in a friend´s garden in Charqueadas-RS



Koka and Wolf my friends, gently gave this above plant to me.
In nature we can not find more than half a dozen and they are seedlings produced with the 
seeds they found there
 


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Aug 9, 2012

What flowers!!!!! ...and Dyckia!!!!!



Dyckia sp from Northeast Santa Catarina Uphills
 
 


Who said Dyckia flowers are inexpressive?
Besides do not succumbing from blooming some Dyckias really make splendid boomings.

 



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Aug 8, 2012

Dyckia hebdingii grandis



I am repeating some of these to emphasise the  beauty and the unusual here.
This geographical Dyckia hebdingii variety is a sight to behold.
 


Grandis is bigger than the type hebdingii form and may be 
stunning white or almost plain green.
 


I love to see these two pictures, they reveal so many information...
The grass seedlings are vivid green this means it rained a lot a week or two ago.
 
 


The luxury greenery of the moss carpet assures moisture to the cacti and Dyckia

 



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Dyckia brevifolia in nature...something much more than just stunning beautiful


Yes, some are pale green and a bit of yellowish and this is not due to any sort of weak nutrition or any sunnier position or any dryer condition. They are so! These individuals have this tendency.




Look here, of course the landscape is dazzling fabulous but notice the way these clumps are spectacular.
Dyckia brevifolia is a tremendously beautiful and aesthetic plant.
It forms hemispheres, half balls so beautiful one must see to believe his eyes.
Here I do not mean the place where they grow and call home, I mean not the bare rock, the water proximity, I mean the plant itself and the way it clumps.
Where are the silver white ones, the huge spines, the red ones, the heavily frosted ones, those we are used to call as outrageous beautiful?
Look at those plants here.
Would the most expensive, exclusive and sophisticated pot do any better than this?


You should be here.
I guarantee you would change your idea of the ideal way to present a Dyckia
in a show. I also wonder if a brevifolia would not beat the most
fancy and sophisticated hybrid.
Gorgeous is a happy plant and not necessarily the fancier.
Take a flat rock to the show.....
 


Come, you may come to Brazil... I shall lead you to this paradise
...and guide you here.

 

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Take my hand...I am no stranger in this Paradise....


Dyckia hebdingii minor, the blue Dyckia

 This is the smallest of all hebdingii forms and varieties and also de bluest and the cutest.
This formation here may be originated by a single plant only and all these heads are divisions of a very same plant. They are all equal each one the very same one 
and this clump must be very very old.
Notice the two diferent cacti growing with them, one colunar and one ball shaped one.
See where the plant prefered to stabilish itself...on the rock and not on the terrain close by.
See its wonderful color found nowhere else in any other hebingii form or any other Dyckia for this is blue, not bluish.



If you were to pick up one, which one would be chosen?
They are all the very same plant!
See the plant below. It is a triad! A three headed one and it is in my hand.
I took this one to a Botanic Garden in São Paulo.
See the plant, could it be better looking?
In nature! Wilderness in its most adorable creation....I am not a scientist, I´m a lover of the beautiful a curious mind, an entrepreneur of the wonder.
I shall get back there to take better pictures, with plenty of time and show you details never shown before. Hours are not enough...
See below, notice every hint, every detail...I hold a treasure in my hand.
This rock field is at risk and sooner or later the road will be paved, will get broader and the plants will be gone forever as this population is a few very few meters from the dusty narrow road.

 
 Seeds were in pristine conditions.
...and believe, I wished you were there with us.

Far far away is a place that there isn´t.
Nothing that exists wasn´t dreamed before.

Without a dream there is no place to go, nothing to see, nowhere to feel free.
Without dreams we just breath...

Ah, I would like to see your face, your eyes, your smile your excitement...this I can´t describe and would never be able to do it!
I am here, come...take my hand for I am not a stranger in Paradise.

What about a very small group of three or five people?
We can stay on a small farm over there right in the middle of these area.
The land owner and his wife would take us for few days.
They own  a rock hill with the most exclusive and pristine Dyckia collection
I already talked to them and they accepted it promptly.

This is a way or the way to make the land owner guard and care about these stunning plants.
We would be preserving that spectacular  and unbelievably beautiful scenery to future generations.
If you know how to camp, bring your camping gear, you can camp right by the farmer house.
This is more than possible! 
It is up to you.
Come...


Click on this, please:

Take my hand.....I am no strange here.

... for my country is a vast and magnificent one...a luxury dream land for minds as ours....


 

Aug 7, 2012

Where Dyckia reitzii lives...up high and cold South in Brazil



Aparados da Serra Canyons in between Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
Notice the grandeur of this lanscape.
This is one of the few places in Brazil wher we can find snow and almost dayly frosts in winter
from June to Sptember.


In spite of the ice burned grasses the green form of Dyckia reitzii is not damaged by the low temperatures.


The rubra form is much more frost tender than the green one and only those specimen under the protection of the shrubs will resist unmolested by the frost. This also explains why the rubra ones are so hard to be seen. Also real rubra ones are only found here.
 


Well hidden plants will resist bravely to the intense cold.


 

Aug 6, 2012

Dyckia reitzii rubra, the queen of the abyss


Dyckia reitzii rubra
 (Unsere schönsten Edelweiß)
 
This is  the Dyckia version of an Edelveiss (Leontopodium alpinum), the famous Star of the Alps.
A Stella alpina that grows only where the braves dare do go.

 Um meine Freunde in Deutschland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwmHHs9N_4&feature=related

Thanks to:
Raquel Zeitz, my wife.
Steven and Phyllis Frieze, Californian friends. 
Jorge Luiz Wolf and Koka Wolf, my Brazilian Gaucho friends.
Mauro Peixoto, the Brazilian botanist I admire the most.

The first step of any journey is dreaming of it .....



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Aug 5, 2012

Dyckia reitzii rubra



Here it is...at last.
 
 
 
 


Here you can see some rubras way down on the cliff wall....