Bowiea volubilis

The beast awakens! It started a bit early this year, usually it doesn't come out of dormancy until around the end of January to early February. Notice the light green leaf about 20mm/0.75in high in the centre. It is the only leaf it will grow this year, all the rest is mutant flowering stem. This plant is about 30 years or so old and regularly produces seed. The caudex measures about 5in/13cm across. The spots are not natural to the plant, they are the legacy of a hail storm about 10 years ago. It is just very slow to lose the damaged layers.

Every year around this time I sit down with the plant and peel off any sheath parts which have dried up and gone papery, giving the plant a "face lift" for the new growing season. This helps to make sure there are no nasty bugs hiding in the plant crevices. This year I found five fat mother mealy bugs just waiting for the new growth to begin and squashed 'em. Very satisfying! Mostly though this plant is basically pest free. Occasionally, I discover an adventurous caterpillar on the main stem during the growing season which will meet the same fate, but this really is an easy care and lovely caudiciform with very few problems.

If anything, I think some people are too kind to their plants - too much water and fertiliser tends to encourage an all over green and rather blah looking specimen with little character and there is always the risk of rot with a plant which is too lush and sappy, as there is with any caudex forming plant. I also think that too much water may discourage flowering in favour of more growth, but I can't prove it, cause I am NOT going to experiment with my plant. During the growing season the "vine" will extend for up to 20 feet or so and have hundreds of small green flowers, so the bulb works quite hard each year. In the wild, the caudex may reach up to 10in/25cm across, but as this can take 70 years or so, mine has a way to go yet.

There is a known subspecies, Bowiea volubilis subsp. gariepensis which I have not yet been able to source. and another named species, Bowiea kilimandscharica about which I know even less; so if any one has any information about either of these, I would love to here about it. The other peculiarity is that some plants always stay solitary, as my plant has done, while others readily split and cluster to form groups of bulbs. I would love to get my hands on a genetic analysis of the clustering plants vs. the solitary ones - they are SO different in habit it makes you wonder just WHAT is going on. I am raising a crop of seedlings from mine at present as I am interested to see if the solitary nature comes true from seed or not.

What an interesting plant.I will have to see if it's avalable in the US.I need more low/no care plants.

Just a wonderful and different plant, thanks for sharing it with us!

;~}
Larry

Since it's been almost a month since "the beast awakened" I wondered what it looks like now. Does the vine grow quickly? How long before it blooms?

Very interesting plant.

Mine are blooming now, and bloom alot each winter, but I've never gotten seeds on these. This is the first year it splits and I get a baby... The other thing is, it looked like it was going to die off shriveled up, then they filled back up really nice, they are about the size of softballs. But, I am wondering if there are male and female bulbs, and why mine do not produce seeds?

also, on the bulb forum, they have started new babies by buried leaves in the soil, they suppposedly form new bulbetts, (also on the cactus forum, there was some discussion regarding these.


edited to add: by buried leaves, I mean't buried scales off of the onion itself.

This message was edited Jan 30, 2008 5:22 PM

Sorry to make you wait - I have been off forum for a couple of weeks because of work stuff. Here is a picture I took on the 30th of January - I'll try to get back a bit further and show you the whole vine next time. Usually the vine gets to around 15ft (5 metres) in each growing season so it gets a bit unruly to photograph. At the moment it is about 3ft (1 metre) long, and rapidly out growing it's garden stake.

As far as I know any Boweia which is flowering should set seed - if yours is not doing so it may lack a pollinator and you may have to help it along with a small paint brush - my plant set well over 100 pods last year, but it is outdoors and I think the ants pollinate it. I have a few seedlings up now as well, pictures to follow once I get a but caught up.

Ciao, KK.

Oh, I'm going to try hand pollination, maybe that is it, it is inside and is growing like crazy, it is blooming too. Do you by chance have a photo of what a seedpod looks like? or the seeds? It would be great if you did. I'm going to hand pollinate tonight and see what happens.

Thanks for telling me that, I would of never thought about hand pollinating.

Hi Gourd,
I had a hunt around in my files but I don't seem to have any digital photos of the seed pods. After you pollinate them the centre of the flower will swell up into a green pod up to about an inch high. At the end of the growing season the pods will dry out and split, releasing a number of shiny black seeds. These will be about one quarter of an inch long, and look a bit like narrow onion seeds. Plant them in a sandy seedling mix, under about 1/8th of an inch of grit. In habitat they germinate and grow in the winter, but I think they will come up any time indoors, as long as you give them enough light, water and warmth. Keep the seedlings damp but not flooded with water as the bulbs will be very small for the first year or two - My seedlings from last year are about 18 months old and the bulbs are about the size of a large pea and I have only recently reduced their watering regime to once a week. This years crop of seedlings germinated about 2 months ago and barely have any bulb to speak of. I hope this information will help you out.

Ciao, KK.

I have a single Bowiea volubilis and I get viable seed to form on the plant when I pollinate the flowers by hand. I also have a single Bowiea gariepensis and I cannot get seed to form even when I try to pollinate the plant by hand. Either B. gariepensis is not self-fertile or it is dioecious (male and female on separate plants).

For me, B. volubilis is a summer grower and B. gariepensis is a winter grower.
Mike

Wow! What an amazing plant!!! It's really beautiful..........

Beautiful plant. Mine is much smaller but I love it. It has been growing all winter.

Oh, a compliment from the queen of the "fat plants" - I am thrilled you like it Sally, I have spent a lot of time drooling over your plants on the forum here in DG. As a progress report I'd like to say that the first flower buds for this season appeared early in February and were close to full size, but not yet open on the 18th of February. I'll report back as soon as I have further news. Since the plant has been actively growing I have been giving it a drink of home-made "weed tea" about once every three weeks, which it seems to like a great deal. I have adopted this as a general pick-me-up for most of my bulbs, cacti, and other succulents in recent years and it seems to be a great all round plant tonic without any risk of overfertilization.

Ciao, KK.

Wow, Queen of the Fat Plants. I don't know about that but I will take it! Thank you. What is weed tea? I need to know about this. Sally

HI Sally,
Weed Tea is like compost tea but you use all your woody, prickly and gone to seed weeds which would cause you a problem if composted in the normal manner. We have two round black plastic rubbish bins down the back of the garden. They are 66 litre size (about 15 gallons). To start you half fill one bin with water. then every time you have weeds or any other annoying plant material you stick it in the bin and push it into the water and put the lid on. Once the first bin is full, start on the second. Leave the full bin shut for a couple of weeks.

This stuff stinks because of anaerobic digestion, so I don't recommend manufacturing it in small gardens with close neighbours, but the anaerobic microbes break down different chemical pathways and open up nutrients to feed not only the plants themselves but also the beneficial microbes in your soil and potting mix with flow on benefits for your plants. The "Tea" is ready to use once the liquid turns a dark blackish brown. To use it dilute it by about 4 or 5 times with plain water (until it is the same colour as weak tea - hence the name) and water it onto your soil in the garden or into your pots every two to three weeks. By the time you empty the first bin and start filling it up again the second one will be ready to use and so on ad infinitum. The smell dissipates rapidly once you apply it, as fresh air will kill off the methane producing anaerobic microbes quick smart leaving lots of simple chemical compounds to revitalise your plants.

The neat part of the whole process is the sheer amount of plant food you can produce by doing this. I have well over a thousand different plant species and cultivars spread over my bulbs, cacti, succulents, caudiciforms, fruit and vegetables, annuals, and perennial herbaceous plants - this stuff goes on everything! and it cuts down my usage of purchased fertilisers drastically.

I hope this answers your questions,

Ciao, KK.

The first flower for 2008 opened today. I was going to trim the picture down, but I thought some of you would be interested to see more of the vines.

Ciao, KK.

Hi Guys,
Finally this is the overall shot I kept promising to do for you. The main stem has been up and down the 4 foot (125cm) bamboo stake, and then up again; so it would be somewhere between 10 and 12 feet (3-3.5m) if you strung it out in a straight line. There is about a foot (30cm) of stake above the top edge of the photo but there isn't much growth up there yet. From this point in the season, the length doesn't increase much more - only the flower producing side shoots grow, making the plant bushier and bushier. We are having an extremely hot and nasty start to autumn this year, and the low humidity is making the caudex work extra hard so it looks a bit shrivelled at present but it is still healthy. Even though I have had this plant for so long, it still amazes me that one baseball sized bulb can make such a big effort every year, with no more than water, sunlight and a few minerals. Can you imagine what it would be like if Daffodils or Hyacinths could get this large?

TTFN, KK.

Beautiful!

Well, mine got soft and looked like it was going to rott, then it got hard again and split.. The newer part is growing sideways, almost like under the soil to the side.. I took it outside for fresh air.

I never peeled mine, here's a close up

And the entire plant. I ended up selling it on ebay for $5 or something, geez, what a dummy I am!