Conophytum buysianum

Conophytum buysianum was regarded as a purple-flowered subspecies of C. reconditum in “Dumpling and his Wife”, but was given full species status in Bradleya 2011 and at the same time, a smooth-bodied variant was published as C. buysianum ssp. politum. I have never seen this species in the wild although Jennifer and I once spent an afternoon unsuccessfully searching gneiss hills to the west of Kliprand using habitat info that Steven Hammer had given us. Those were pre-GPS days, but even if co-ordinates had been available we might not have found it; Chris Rodgerson has told me that it is extremely cryptic when not in flower. The species was first discovered by Buys Wiese, a nurseryman and conservationist from Vanrhynsdorp, and named for him. C. reconditum is little problem to grow apart from ensuring that it does not get sunburnt in summer, but C. buysianum in contrast is a real beast. The first problem in growing this species is getting any material either as plants or seeds. I suspect that seeds have never been offered commercially and very few are even available by exchange between friends. I was given about 10 seeds of subsp. politum some time ago and did raise three plants to flowering size that I subsequently lost. Steven Hammer regards subsp. politum as rather easier to grow than subsp. buysianum but I think that his British friends find both to be equally intractable. I did achieve some success with a couple of heads of ssp. buysianum that I was given. These were grown on to a group of around 50 heads that filled a 5cm square pot and which flowered for several years. During the summer I kept the pot in a position where it did not receive any direct sun and I think that this is probably essential for the species. In the wild it probably retracts under the grit for the summer. The first assault on this pot was by a tortrix moth which decided to lay its eggs on one of the most valuable plants available to it. Fortunately this was spotted quickly before much damage was done, but sometime later heads started to die off for no apparent