Two very smart blokes who are a lot more competent than me. They know who they are. One of them asked the question about flowering time and all that in relation to speciation and the obvious implication for recognition of species. No I have dealt with that in detail throughout the Updates. We have the problem of retusa (nomenclaturally correct but phylogenetically, if there is such a thing, wrong) and mirabilis (technically, and even perhaps nomenclaturally a later name for atrovirens). The same conundrum crops up in Tulista – are there four species or is it one system. Opalina comes to mind because it flowers November (or it did for me) but I observed without anything to substantiate what I say, a putative hybrid marginataXpumila did (it is extinct now due to its place on the verge of a National highway through Swellendam. Marginata near Swellendam flowers wrongly in Nov. too. The flowers were also identical while a bigger, and whiter than is normal for T. minima. Just who is the taxonomic lunatic that made the change from my Tulista minima to T. minor or even H. minima to H. minor? This is total conflation of purpose. Marginata and pumila should flower in Jan/Feb. There are anomalous populations at Ashton that “we” dismiss as hybrids of those two species, with adjacent plants undoubtedly the same as the two species “we“ insist on. If they can hybridise like this, we have to ask how could it possibly have happened. I have other records and even published pictures and comments about this hybrid conundrum. It is dramatic in Tylecodon aborescens, Tylocodon cacallioides and T. wallichii where I have grown the arborescensXcacaliodes from seed to find it fully fertile. This picture shows an inflorescence of Haworthia pumila (some authorities recognise it as Tulista pumila and attempted to demand the name Haworthia major to confound us all. I unkindly point to these as idiots that totally conflate the issue of a name system that serves people, and one that serves egocentricity and intellectualism). Not that there is flower, and ripe capsules on the same inflorescence. Does this have any significance? It touches on another problem. This is of how seed ripening time relates to conditions for germination events and indeed it needs special conditions for seed to germinate and establish. A vast subject. Of nurse plants, allopathy and inter-species plant communication? Of my paper cabbages and kings. (to music). ♦