Cactus Blog 

Cymbidium in bloom for the miserable weather we’re having. And not one of those fancy hybrids with all those pretty colors that people love. This one is white.

It’s our latest ad being published in the SF Chronicle Home and Garden section tomorrow.

Special New York Italian Greyhound edition, pajama jackets included at no extra cost.

From a magazine apparently called Candy and Cactus, there’s a store in Toronto that sells plants and toiletries interspersed in the aisles.

Here’s some Haworthia and an ice cream case:

An orchid among the shaving creams:

Photo credits: Mikaël Lavogiez

What is up with a magazine called Candy and Cactus anyway?

What makes this an antique? It’s old.

Visiting Cards Cape Good Hope Africa Cactus Print 1883

It’s from a newspaper or magazine, and it appears to be an editorial cartoon. There’s some words on the cactus pads indicating something that must have been important in 1883, but I can’t read it from this image. If someone goes ahead and buys the original print, please let us know what it says so we can understand the context. Of course, we probably won’t understand the context anyway, not being from the 19th century and all.

Some days I feel like I should have been born in an earlier era, but not the 19th century. Maybe I could have had a lot of success in the 18th century. I could have been an explorer! Or a deckhand on a ship that went exploring into the pirate coast of Tripoli! That would have been exciting.

Hort Log has some very nice Hoya bloom photos, and even goes to the trouble to explain the differences between a couple of types of Hoyas that are commonly confused.

No longer for sale on EBay, they went for only .99c each! Oh, what a bargain we missed out on.

That’s a lot of cactus. Shall we name them all? And if we do, should we use the antique names, like Trichocereus and such, or update them to current standard as indicated in Anderson’s The Cactus Family?

Sent to us from Jbot

It’s an Aeonium arboreum with the central stem missing, but what’s that I see – another new rosette forming right in the middle!

And of course the big rosette we’re looking at is about to bloom out with hordes of little yellow flowers and then that branch is going away forever.

A question from the Cactus Jungle facebook page:

Thank you guys for finding a beautiful Opuntia santa-rita for me in the back on Monday afternoon. I’ve been giving it warm shelter in my car at the moment on the passenger side floor. Between the santa-rita and the violacia, which one has a more purple hue to them when stressed?

Michael

Michael,

They’re very closely related; some consider the O. santa-rita to be a subspecies of O. violacea. And there are a number of different O. violaceas; different subspecies and different population groups. The purple colors vary and the intensity of the color can vary too, but to just get down and answer your question, the O. santa-rita will get more purple color.

Here’s some photos:

Opuntia santa-rita (O. violacea ssp. santa-rita)

Opuntia violacea

Opuntia macrocentra (O. violacea ssp. macrocentra)

I’ve got a couple more posts from the trip to New York. (Hint: We went to the butterfly show).

But first, yet another window while window shopping in New York. This time there’s no cactus, just a very special bud vase.

Yes, if you look closely you can see that this bud vase is very special indeed, $1000 worth of special. It looks just like something we would carry at the nursery! Or not. Would you pay $1000 for a bud vase from us? Because if you would, let me know and I can make sure to have a very special bud vase ready and waiting for you too.

Auntie Rachel sends along these desert photos, probably from Arizona but I don’t know for sure.

A guide to weird food eaten the world over from Eeow! foods.

Cactus apples, eaten in Mexico
Red or purple fruits growing on beavertail cactus plants need to be removed very carefully. They are then rolled around in the sand and skinned with a sharp knife. The purple ones taste like cranberry while the red taste like pears. Be warned not to eat more than three at a time for fear of constipation.

Actually, the prickly pear fruit is called a “Cactus Pear” among other names, and the “Cactus Apple” refers to the fruit of the Cereus Peruvianus, not to get all pedantic on your a**.

The Poughkeepsie Journal wants you to know where to store your succulents this summer in Poughkeepsie. In an outdoor wall planter.

Wallter outdoor wall planter works best for succulents and herbs.

It turns out the “wall” planter is a hanging planter. Nice enough, I suppose, but nothing I’d want to spend my money on. I wonder what those people at the Poughkeepsie Journal were thinking? And where is Poughkeepsie anyway, Long Island? No – it’s the Hudson River Valley. Nice!

An interesting bit of history, but the photo is taken in the front yard, so there’s no view of the named cactus fence. You’d think since the article was all about the fence, the picture would include the fence, but then you would be wrong. And it’s a small photo! Hardly worth “borrowing” from the Toronto Sun for this blog post.

In Ascension, on the western side of Curacao, is a little white adobe house fronted by a traditional cactus fence that once belonged to one of the island’s first freed slaves. His name was John Scope and today the house, known as Cas di Pal’i Maishi, is a museum run by Janine Bernadina, a fifth generation descendant.

Fortunately, Tripadvisor has a photo of the same house and this time the photo shows the cactus fence in question. Thank you, Tripadvisor! Now, do they have a photo of the Dalai Lama on his birthday?

This photo of Kas di Pal’i Maishi is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

This California native spiny Ribes is also blooming. The flowers are rather low down on the plant, so I had to raise it up to photograph. Either that, or I would have to lay down on the ground. I would have too, for you, but I didn’t.

Ribes speciosum

In Mexico they seem to be having the same weight issues as the US. They’re removing fried snacks and soft drinks, just like the US.

But just to be a little bit different, they’re substituting cactus snacks. The New York Times has the story.

(In) Mexico City… one day recently, there was a hot meal of rice and tortillas, prickly pear leaves with eggs and onions, and squash with soft white cheese.

That sounds delicious. Of course, I’d still rather have a hotdog and chips if I were 10. That’s a lot of kids culture (i.e. advertising dollars) to overcome.

Good Luck!

I found more cactus in NY, fake just like a couple days ago. This one is in the Peccary diorama at the Natural History Museum.

Oreocereus celsianus in bloom

Morning in Central Park

Cactus in Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s famous planned city? Indeed!

Panchkula, a satellite town of Le Corbusier’s verdant and immaculately laid-out Chandigarh, is home to the Cactus Garden, believed to be the largest outdoor landscaped turf of its kind in Asia. Also called the National Cactus and Succulent Botanical Garden and Research Centre, this seven-acre verdure is a major crowd-puller with its sheer variety of prickly greenery.

That was fast, no sooner do we walk out of the hotel than we come upon cactus in New York.

Not living, mind you.

Any clues as to which store this is? And just to make it more interesting, we just got a call from the head of VM for this chain, headquartered in SF, for plants for their 5 biggest stores including this very one.

Wondering what to do this weekend around the West Texas area? Try the Cactus and Succulent Festival at CDRI.

The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s Nature Center offers an opportunity to enjoy desert wondersduring its annual Cactus and Succulent Festival, Saturday (March 12) through March 19.

I love the Big Bend area and would be there if I could, but I’m in New York right now instead so I’ll be missing out.

I’ll post any photos of any plants I happen to find in New York along the streets, but don’t hold your breath. I do have some leftover photos from the nursery too that I can blog. I wonder which ones you’ll get to see?

More Ribes sanguineum “Claremont” blooming. This seems to be dominating the nursery right now.

Far Out Flora has some luscious pictures from Golden Gate Park.

But there are more Ribes blooming than just this one. More! Stay tuned…

Hi guys.
I have been really busy this winter, and haven’t been noticing the horror that has reigned down upon my garden.

I notice almost ALL the succulents and even some agaves have these tiny dots on them, Some damage I know is from snails/spit bugs, I dosed the yard with sluggo again recently. Some though is very strange.

But some of the issues are beyond me. Spider mites? Hail damage? I’m at a loss, though will do whatever it takes to fix it. Neem oil? lol I see you say that’s a cure for almost everything I guess I’ll need a few gallons then!

Here’s a picture of the horror….
THX!!! JBOT

It is hail damage, not an infestation. We have had hail several times this winter and it has been large enough and wind driven, so it causes little puncture wounds on the softer cacti and succulents. It should heal up without treatment, but the freckles are permanent to those leaves. We have several crops that were so damaged by hail in December.

Watch for infection around the spots and Neem if needed, but it is mostly just a cosmetic sort of damage.

Take care,
Hap

From Dong-a Ilbo, a Korean golf news service, comes this exciting photo of a golf ball in a cactus. I hope many newspapers in Korea reprinted this photo.

In a pillow? Yes!

The Christian Science Monitor has the skinny on Succulent Pillows with step by step instructions and step by step photos.

Here’s the result.

I recommend a more decorative pillow. Solid colors make me nauseous.

From our Facebook page:

Do you guys cover up your plants on the shelves outside at night? Some of my plants have been damaged and have started to rot. Especially my Neocardenasia herzogiana and my Coral Aloe. Haven’t been home in three months to see them.

Michael

We did have a freeze 2 weeks ago, and covered up some of our Aeoniums and Aloes, and other smaller succulents too. On top of the freeze we had in December, and hail too, there was some damage. For the column cactus the danger is to the growing tips. If you had damage recently they might have started growing again just before the freeze.

Peter

A longer answer would include being sure you have them in a fast draining cactus soil which helps them stay stronger through our winter rains and more able to handle sudden freezes. However when you’re gone for 3 months at a time it can be hard to use a frost blanket for a freeze anyway. I wonder if anyone has set up an internet-enabled cam with a frost-blanket-dropping system all run through weather.com.