There's a plant being offered on OZtion that is apparently Caralluma petraea (syn. Caralluma awdeliana). The photo however looks exactly like Orbea varigata, of which I have more than enough, so I'm wondering if anyone else here has any experience with this Caralluma species.

Does the stem of C. petraea closely resemble O. varigata? Is there much of this caralluma getting around - if so, then perhaps it's worth the punt buying the plant offered, even though I am sick of buying plants that are advertised as something other than O. varigata, only to find that I have yet another bloody one.

Ah, the travails of asclepomania...

I'd be incredibly surprised if that was Caralluma awdeliana and you're quite right in suspecting it's S. variegata. C. awdeliana seems very rare in cultivation, not only here but OS as well, there seems to be only one photo of it on the web and what little of the stems you can see are more squarrish, fatter and knobbly in the purer Caralluma sense and don't have the teeth like the Stap's and Huernia's etc.

A lot of good photo's and info on Stapeliads can be found here including the only pic of awdeliana - http://www.stapeliads.info

I suppose you could ask the seller for a pic of it in flower, but I reckon you'd get the response that it's never flowered, which puts the plants ID well and truly in the unknown bucket !

Thanks for that Navajoa.

Strangely - bizarrely - in all of my searchings for asclepiad images and info on the Intertubes, I have never encountered that site. It's now safely bookmarked, and it warms the cockles of my scientist's heart.

I have seen the awdeliana photo on Gerald Barad's site, but there was no hint that I saw, even there, that indicated the image's presence on stapeliads.info. Nevertheless, it was that photo that had me suspicious, and now I am convinced.

So, no awdeliana, but I now have exactly the site that I have been longing for! It'll give me hours of reading pleasure.