I purchased seedlings of two unamed Espostoas in the early 1970s from de Herdt in Belgium. These had apparently been raised from seed from top cuttings of plants de Herdts had receieved from Peru. They were identified from the areas in which they had been collected : sp.de Utcabamba and sp.de Amazonas. Unfortunately few of these seedlings survived in cultivation because it was not appreciated at the time that these species grew in the hot gorges of northern Peru and needed extra heat to survive northern European winters. We found sp.de Utacabamba particularly difficult and only have one plant left which is in a poor state. The sp de.Amazonas were more sucessful and have grown very fast since we planted them in a free root run nine years ago. One is now around 3m tall and has been flowering for the last three years and now has around 60cm of cephalium. These plants are closely related to Espostoa calva although they may be sufficiently distinct for their own specific or varietal status. The flower of E.calva is not well known so the photograph of our plant in flower is useful. We have not yet managed to set seed in spite of an attempted cross pollination with E.lanata. Our second plant of E.sp.de Amazonas is now around 2.5m but has not yet started to form a cephalium. We hope that once it does we will be able to produce seed in reasonable quantities. The main differences with E.calva are the golden spines and light coloured cephalium. Addendum 2003: The second plant has now started forming a cephalium. However meanwhile it looks like something has gone wrong with root system on the first plant as the stems are shrinking. The main branch with the cephalium has now been cut off and we are attemting to root it. |
Copyright Tony Mace, no reproduction without permission of the author. |
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