All you wanted to know about Haworthias, Gasterias and Astrolobas: Haworthia arachnoidea var. arachnoidea

Haworthia arachnoidea, Bellevue

Haworthia arachnoidea var. arachnoidea (L.) Duval

arachnoidea: spider-like.

H. arachnoidea is well known plant from Western Cape. It is characteristic by numerous leaves, which are uniformly dark green with no translucens area and leave tips occasionally drying and forming a protective cover for the rosette. Leaves margins and keels are with translucens spines. Size of the rossette can reach 180 mm in diameter. It is usually solitary or very slowly offsetting plant. It grows on south slopes, but is always well shaded under bushes or amongst rocks.

Bruce Bayer divides in his book Haworthia Revisited species H. arachnoidea in following varieties - var. arachnoidea, var. aranea, var. namaquensis, var. nigricans, var. scabrispina, var. setata and var. xiphiophylla.

Distribution map

Var. arachnoidea occurs in the Worcester - Robertson area (sensu Bayer) (in this article I also includes plants from Ouberg Pass - H. arachnoidea 'laxa'). In this area it grows in close association with other species (H. herbace, H. reticulata, H. maraisii, H. maculata and others) and there are no signs of hybridization. In other areas are known natural hybrids with H. blackburniae or with H. truncata.

H. arachnoidea is quite complicated species. It grows on large area and it is very variable. It is for sure influenced by several other species like H. nortiery, H. globosiflora, H. pehlemanniae, H. decipiens and H. mucronata. You can have easily only 1 species (sensu Bayer) or you can have virtually 100 (sensu Hayashi). In my "arachnoidea concept" on my web, I use a kind of mixture. Basis part is from Bruce Bayer and I add several "new" names - at the moment: 'dimorphoides', 'tradouwensis', 'candida', 'tretyrensis', 'scottii' , 'isomorpha' and 'joubertii'. There many other "new" names - in some cases I will only mention them on the photo or in text. H. xiphiophylla I will describe in separate article.

H. arachnoidea is well known in cultivation, it needs more shady conditions, othervise it can be burned very easily. Propagation should by done by seed, seldomly by offsetts.

Synonyms:

Aloe pumila var. arachnoidea, Aloe arachnoides, H. arachnoidea var. minor