FIRST REPORT ON A LITHOPS OPTICA a.c.f. 'RUBRA' POPULATION IN HABITAT

摘要

Lithops optica is a common plant along the Namibian coast from about 20km north of Luderitz to about 170km further south (Cole 1978, Cole & Cole 2005). It is restricted to the fog-belt within 35 km of the Atlantic ocean where it occurs mostly on various types of gneiss rock, quartzite and calcrete amongst blown sand (Cole & Cole 2005, Hammer 2010). Despite the fairly wide distribution of this species, the a.c.f. 'Rubra' occurs only extremely rarely in colonies of the typical grey-green plants aroundLuderitz (Cole & Cole 2005). This colour variation is the oldest and most well-known of all Lithops cultivars (Cole 1985, Hammer 2010) but it has not been studied in habitat. During August 2011 a population of the a.c.f. 'Rubra' was discovered (Earle 2012). The aim of this paper is to report on this population.