Cactus Blog 

Quick answers to quick questions.

This plant grows in my neighborhood. I have never seen it elsewhere or for sale.

Thanks, Rosa

Rosa,

That is a Dasylirion longissimum, and we do have them in stock in 5ga. and 15ga. pots.

Peter

Myrtillocactus geometrizans

We’ve got some nice sized specimens that are covered in berries, and still more blooms too. The berries aren’t as photogenic as the flowers, but there are 3 berries in this photo. They taste like blueberries.

Ferocactus tiburonensis goes crazy with late summer blooms.

Hello – I have recently discovered your fantastic nursery and have visited several times.  I have always enjoyed my visits and my purchases and intend to visit again.  You and the staff have always been very pleasant, helpful and very knowledgeable.  I have a question…since I am a novice at growing cacti and succulents, I am interested in finding some books that are accurate in their information and have pictures of the plants and their flowers.  Do you recommend a specific book?  Is there a book you find particularly educational?

Thanks for your time…

~Karen

Karen,

For a general guide to cactus and succulents, we recommend:

Designing with Succulents by Debra Lee Baldwin and The Garden Succulents Primer by Gideon Smith and Ben-erik Van Wyk, both of which we carry. If you can find it, The Complete Guide to Growing Cacti and Succulents by Miles Anderson is great, but out of print.

Peter

A recommendation to plant this amazing scrabbling cactus in Ft. Myers Florida, from the Ft. Myers News-Press, Selenicereus grandiflorus.

It’s a cactus, all right, but parched desert is not required. In fact, this nocturnal beauty is entirely at home in the subtropics. A robust climber, cereus will happily vine its way up trees (sabal palms work particularly well) or spill from hanging pots. Once or twice a year, it blooms. Each starry flower lasts just one night, and is followed by an edible, egg-shaped crimson fruit. When they’re open, the blossoms have a sweet, floral/vanilla scent. The green ribbed stem is segmented and sometimes covered with white fur. Near the blossom, the stem takes on a reddish color.

Very pretty.

Helianthemum nummularium “Wisley Pink”

These are a spring bloomer, but we didn’t have them in the spring. We had “Mesa Wine” through the bloom season, and then we got these pink ones in and no more blooms. Until today. We have a late bloomer!

The Sun Roses have replaced the related Rock Roses as the most popular of the Cistaceae family for us. I think people like the groundcover foliage of the Sun Roses better than shrubby open form of the Rock Roses.

Or Queen Victoria’s Agave, depending on who you ask.

Pardee Street, Berkeley
Agave victoria-reginae and some Aloe arborescens too.

Penstemon “Firebird”

Fenestraria aurantiaca, moist from being recently watered. Don’t overwater, please. Don’t take this photo as permission to overwater.

Usually these have white flowers, but our crop this year has mixed white and yellow flowers. This is good. However, we thought we had enough to last through the winter indoor gardening season, but they’re selling out pretty quickly around here. We were out for about a year, until this crop was ready, and it may be another year before we have more when this round is gone. Gone!

Turns out it includes steel planters and succulents. My favorite combination! Either that or a combination of vodka and, well, no need for anything else really, just the vodka will do. Anyway, here’s the garden in question.

Everything changed for designer Dustin Gimbel when his client Linda Sackin in Huntington Harbor spotted the sleek metal planters that Gimbel installed her in son’s landscape.

Before, Gimbel had lovingly designed and cared for a formal garden in Sackin’s Victorian-esque home. “It was all black slate, cottage flowers and boxwoods,” said Gimbel of the symmetrical garden he tended for two years.

Lots more modern planters and succulent photos if you click through. Look for the Squid Agaves!

This must be called the Butterfly Agave because of the shape of the leaves, not because the blooms attract butterflies, since as you can see by this comma-infested sentence, and the picture below, there are bees swarming the blooms on this plant.

There are lots of Agaves in bloom in Berkeley these days (Like this one).

This Agave potatorum is only about 2 feet across and 10 years old, but this is the end for this beautiful specimen. The bloom stalk is about 12ft. tall. You can see how much energy it would take for this giant stalk to come out of this rosette:

And the flowers are kind of nice too. At least the bees think so.

This weekend.

The Fort Worth Cactus and Succulent Society’s show and sale continues Saturday at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. You can choose from thousands of succulents that usually aren’t sold in this area. It’s 8 a.m.-5 p.m. at 3220 Botanic Garden Blvd., Fort Worth.

Do you think anyone reads these notices I post and didn’t already know about these things and goes?

It turns out that the key to growing succulents in the UK is to get them under a cold frame before winter while they’re still dry. And I thought the key was to bring them indoors by the fire while you’re sipping tea.

They overwintered in pots in the cold frame. All the succulents survived the winter in that same completely unheated cold frame. The secret is to get them under cover while the pots are still quite dry. In winter, succulents are more likely to rot off because of damp, than shrivel because of cold.

The Cotswold Wildlife Park and Garden, Burford, Oxfordshire OX18 4JW is open daily (10am-6pm, last admission 4.30pm); admission £11.60. For more information go to cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk

Apparently the succulent bouquet idea for weddings isn’t going away anytime soon. The hot trend from 3 years ago is still the hot trend.

Succulents are always in style, but their deep, rich colors are a natural fit for Fall weddings. Luscious centerpieces filled with these hearty plants will look sophisticated set in vintage silver vases and pails scoured from flea markets and thrift shops.

For bouquets, compliment your succulents with vibrant flowers in purples, magentas, and blues, from organic and local growers.

We do centerpieces for a lot of weddings these days, but always potted, never cut. People come to us because we’ll pot up hundreds of little succulents for them in their own special little pot, and then they group them as centerpieces and everybody gets to take one home. Sometimes we even plant up larger mixed succulent pots for a special centerpiece too.

We’ve got an Aloe plicatilis blooming out of season, but then the weather has been strange all summer.

It turns out there’s a cactus garden that you can visit if you’re looking to visit a cactus garden when you are in Australia. First off, the article has some strange Australian english to get through.

To the west of Strathmerton lies the Barmah forest and its magnificent red gums. South, and you’ll find the irrigation centre of Numurkah….

But then they do get to the point of the story, the cactus.

So it is an odd site indeed to come across Jim and Julie Hall’s Cactus Country.

And what do they say about this themselves? Something about cactus hats?

It is, according to the couple, among the top 10 cactus gardens in the world.

Good to know.

Ian keeps sending me photos of “successful” mousetraps. If you know Ian, please let him know that I have enough photos already. Thank you.

Solanum umbelliferum “Spring Frost” is a very pretty white-flowered cultivar of the Blue Witch Nightshade. But don’t ask for any at the nursery, we’re out. And we don’t get it in very often anyway. But you never know if you come by often then one day, maybe, there it will be. Yay!

If you do have it, go ahead and prune it back in the late fall so it comes out pretty in the spring, and then prune it before summer again to get it to rebloom all summer long.

Frederik from Ystad, Sweden has a lovely Aloe photo for you to go visit. Maybe someone can help him out with a species name?

From the Boston Globe:

4th Annual Show and Sale presented by the Cactus & Succulent Society of Massachusetts September 18-19.

The Cactus and Succulent Show is included with regular admission to Tower Hill Botanic Garden… at 11 French Drive, Boylston, exit 24 off Route 290.

Or from the botanic garden’s website, with picture!:

Tower Hill Botanic Garden is proud to host the 4th Annual Show and Sale presented by the Cactus & Succulent Society of Massachusetts. Visitors will be awestruck at the amazing and unusual forms, textures, and colors of these rare plants

It appears that Keith’s mousetraps have worked to stop the little critter that has been eating our organic fertilizers. I won’t share Ian’s photo with you, but let’s just say that the mouse did not decide to go for the bait in the no-kill traps.

Rebutia fiebrigii

These have been our most reliable bloomers during this record cold summer (with a couple of very short heat spells.) Here’s a photo of one blooming back in June. Notice the color variation. I wonder if we should hand select these for the different oranges and give them cultivar names? Rebutia “Orange Sherbert” and Rebutia “Orange Ice Cream” and Rebutia “Orange Chocolate Cake”.

Naah.

A+C: Succulents wants to know if Aeonium “Schwartzkopf” will grow in her neighborhood in Utah. One commenter has suggested they’re annuals there.

A photo shows them interspersed with blue fescues, possibly growing in Utah, but hard to know for sure.

Spokane, Washington prepares for winter by starting up the indoor gardening. Cactus comes first. And for the 2nd time today we have an unnamed Mammillaria.

A Clustering Globular Cactus is on display at Manito Park’s Gaiser Conservatory.

This Mammillaria has a lot of blooms. More than is usual, since usually there is a single row of blooms open at any one time, with additional rows along the crown ready to bloom later.

I don’t know the species – any guesses? It has pronounced tubercles, and very bright pink flowers. A little bit of woolly between the tubercles and at the crown. That should be enough to ID it.

Yes, that is the common name for this member of the cactus family that looks like it should be in the agave family.

Leuchtenbergia principis is from the Chihuahuan desert and unlike the agave it can bloom and bloom again, every year. Though they do not bloom young, so you may have to wait 10 years to see such a vibrant yellow flower.

Those weird papery spine things on the ends of the arm-like thingys are in fact the spines, true cactus spines, coming off the “arms” which are not branches or stems or even leaves, but what is a tubercule. Cactus are soooo interesting!

They need a tall pot, since they have a big and ruddy taproot.