Given its benign Mediterranean climate and idyllic location wedged between the spectacular Santa Ynez mountains and the scenic Pacific, the town of Santa Barbara, CA has long been a hub of horticultural activity. During the 1970s, Will Beitel was a major player in that scene in charge of the Botany teaching collection at UCSB. When I first visited the collection in the late 70s there were some venerable specimens in the lath-house including a massive gasteria, the proportions of which I have not seen since. It had a distichous arrangement of leaves, even in its maturity, a perpetuated juvenile condition (no offense intended to aficionados of any musical genre). These leaves were so thick and leaden they seemed to wrinkle at the base as if sagging under their own weight and formed a fan two feet across. Following Will’s retirement, John Bleck assumed care and building of the collection. He kindly shared a propagule of this gasteria in the early 1980s that I have nurtured and propagated over the years, finally having enough for general distribution. Ours have yet to achieve the size of the original. Rather than being inflated in memory, I continue to hope that it will again reach that size given the right degree of shade and moisture and time. The flowers are typical of the genus with corollas swollen basally and hanging from the peduncle branches like a flock of flamingo heads. Rooted plants of HBG 96489. $10.
Published in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, Vol. 91 (2), Summer 2019