Some plants around the house
 

Our home from the front. On the right is a real Blue Agave (Tequila Agave)


This is a rare plant! Aloe Susannae


Our Aloe Tree - Aloe Barberae This is my favorite plant!


Puya Berteroniana from Chile
This is a really wicked nasty plant! The barbs are hooked, razor sharp and point inwards toward the plant making it really difficult to unhook yourself from it. It feeds on sheep as they get stuck and decompose. The flowers are insane too! Here is a link for more info and to see some more pictures.
Puya berteroniana -- The Turquoise Puya



Mexican Grass Tree - Dasylirion


Madagascar Palm It's about 4 feet tall now but growing in a tiny container hidden under the rocks.


And a couple nice looking Succulents, not sure what they are.

Re: Some plants around the house
 

Hey Mitchel, great stuff. My kind of stuff! :ha: Agaves, yuccas, dracaena, cacti, euphorbia, aloe!

This is what I try to keep here. The weather is not kind to them here as it is too wet. I have a decent collection of the agaveceae over the years and it takes quite awhile to get them accustomed to the outdoor conditions. I have lost many plants as a result of this. Yep, I am also a crazy collector of pachypodiums! Only thing is, when planted into the ground, they explode when the rains come! :ha:

Re: Some plants around the house
 

Same ol story, we want to grow all the things that are difficult for our zones! Tropicals here and arid plants there!

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:ha::ha::ha::ha::ha::ha::ha:

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That aloe tree sure reminds me of the Dragon tree!
Those are some really cool plants. Wish I could grow them here.
That thorny plant does look wicked. I had a Bed of Nails plant that you would prolly like. Big leaves with strait long thorns on top & undersides of leaves. It even produced a edible citrus-like fruit. It died over a winter.

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One of these days I'll grab my camera and take pics of some of the local Dragon trees that i know about. Funny how I can remember where all the Aloe and Dragon trees are! Some of them are really huge!

Re: Some plants around the house
 

I am totally crazy about the Dragon Tree, Dracaena draco and I am the 1st guy in M'sai to germinate them. The only problem is, I don't have any idea where I can apply for an extension on the lease of my lifespan for another 80 years to see them grow! :ha:

Mitchel you are so lucky to have them around you.

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Tog and Patty, here is one of the locations I spoke of. It's just a few blocks from my house. Just let the map do it's thing and it should show you the front of someones house. The huge tree by the curb is an Aloe tree, and the one by the front porch is a Dragon tree. When I go on my picture tour I'll make sure to get nice shots of this one!

culver city ca - Google Maps

Oh and btw, just for fun click on the picture and then click the white arrow in the street. Go 2 houses down and you can see bananas!

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This one is maybe 2 blocks from me! Check out the size of the palm tree next to it!

culver city ca - Google Maps

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Another down the street.

culver city ca - Google Maps

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Thanks Mitchel. How do they do that?? Was like I'm standing in middle of street & can go in a complete circle & see all around. How can they pick that up from a satellite?? Just amazing.
Tog, I saw a dragon tree at the conservatory here, about 8-9ft tall & it was 30 yrs old. I think we should go to Mitchels neighborhood & steal one now that we know where they are LOL:)

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Mitchel, Patty and Tog - when we lived in South Africa, the variety of aloes and succulents were breathtaking. I was a kid so don't know what they were but even then they made an impression. But now I have decided to grow what grows here, and not struggle with the impossible. With one exception - does anyone know of a scarlet geranium that will thrive in very humid conditions? What I would give for a big pot of them on the patio, but they are the hardest thing here, and have to be shaded, fanned, cosseted to a ridiculous degree - and then they die!!

Re: Some plants around the house
 

Mitchell, your bottom two are a Kalanchoe, aka Mother of Thousands, and a Sempervivum. I have the exact same two, but like Tog says, it's tough to keep them alive in all the moisture I've got.

Cass, I'll send you some seeds from the roadside weeds! We have a very humidity-hardy red geraniums (well, a pelargonium) here, with the annoying tendency to escape and compete with the Sobralia orchids on the verges.

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Patty, it's done using a special camera van with a 360 degree camera that's hooked into a GPS unit. Here are a few pics of it.

http://weblogfor.us/wp-content/uploa...google_van.jpg

Street View in Google Maps Secret Revealed - Matt Cutts

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I have had Kalanchoe in the past, but this is a way different plant. I was lucky enough to have a friend tell me to carefully move the mother of thousands to the trash and then vacuum the whole area where it was to remove any fallen babies. They can be very invasive here in So Cal. This plant is totally different and only flowers. No babies!

The other does not look like any of the Sempervivum pics on Google. Must be something else. EDIT: Might be this..
Echeveria Hybrid After Glow

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This was one of the plants we really wanted for the front yard but found them to be very expensive and difficult to obtain due to their somewhat endangered status. I could have had a whole container of them shipped here from Thailand I believe it was but it would have cost about as much as our house! Maybe single plants can be found nowadays? I haven't looked in a long time.

Station Creek Tree Farm, Queensland Australia

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I'm standing by Kalanchoe for your first one, Mitchell. The flowers are a dead giveaway!

K. gastonis-bonnieri is very similar.

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The flowers are similar but not the same. Believe me, I've had Kalanchoe and this is not that. Here are some more pics and some real Kalanchoe pics for comparison.

My plant


Genuine Kalanchoe, notice the serrated leaf edges where the babies used to be attached.


My plants flowers that grow horizontally and don't have the green bell at the top, also they don't open the same.


Real Kalanchoe flowers that hang like bells and have a green bell. Also notice that unlike mine these grow in multiple levels, mine just have one canopy of flowers across the top.


And here are mine after they form seed pods.


So as you can see there are some minor similarities, but they are totally different plants!

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Mitchel,
Have you considered the Xanthorrhoea Preisii? Here's a link to a Seller in Richmond, CA that sells seedlings for $10, see item #21. He might have larger ones. Paul Leondis - Rosette Plants for Sale

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Thanks Chong, that really a beautiful plant! He has some other really outstanding plants on his site too! The issue with growing from seedling is that I'll die way before seeing a trunk on it! That's why we tried to get a mature specimen that had been removed from an area that they were doing construction or some such business. I found out later that the government had to stop people from poaching them and or shipping them out of country.