Gardening in Fuerteventura

[Can the Man]

Keep a look out for me on it, same user name

[windermeregolfer]

One of our Aloe's yesterday morning.

   

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Nice WMG - just the sort of thing Si Tie could plant!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

One of my self-seeded Daturas, Blackcurrant Swirl, has slightly different colours than normal. Perhaps it has crossed with one of my other Daturas?

first bloom on new seedling.

Previous seedling, true to parent.

[OMR + MIN]

Hi
i think this is more of the wild variety. Dark leaves & mauve variegated blooms. Just pops up on the streets & wasteland at random, Was told years ago that the council pull them up - poisonous!
They have a very big seed pod.

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Hi OMR
Only poisonous if eaten! Some years ago I worked out how many seeds you would need to eat to receive a fatal dose - can't remember exactly but I seem to remember it was in the 000s. I always wash my hands after handling the plants, I've never seen an animal trying to nibble them and there were plenty in Geofond when I lived there (plants and goats!) The only things that seem immune are red spider mite - typical!
Far more dangerous is the Castor Oil plant that grows wild in many urban areas here. 4-8 seeds which contain Ricin can be fatal to an adult!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Lots of colour in the garden:

  

  

  

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

the 'marmite' plant is coming in to flower. An easy to grow and propagate, quickly spreading succulent, I call it the 'marmite' because of it's smell - you either love it or ……..

Personally I think it smells of stale cat pee. One friend thinks it smells lovely, another can't smell it at all!

It stinks (or delights) whenever it is disturbed, by lizards, watering, birds etc. but I give it ground space as it fills many a gap where other stuff doesn't want to grow.

 

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Interesting little succulent I was given recently. Anyone know what it is/how big it gets?



Love the cute tiny flowers! (Ignore the large bright red blob, that's a stray geranium petal.) I think all the tiny red bobbles are flower buds.

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Loads of the big agaves are sending up their bloom spikes, amazing how quickly they grow. These 2 have grown to about 4m in the space of a few weeks. You can understand why the main plant dies off after sending up a spike like this - so much energy goes into it! The diameter of the spikes is about 40cm at present. Near the tops very strange additional growths are showing, like square sticks.

 

When these plants throw up their spikes in the UK it often makes the local news programmes while for us they bloom like weeds!