Cactus Blog 

A Growing Obsession uses broken pieces of glass as a succulent mulch, and calls it “Succulents on Ice“. Better than petunias on ice any day.

Blogging in my backyard on my day off. Now that’s service!

A little long, but quite entertaining as Whysall visits WIG in Burnaby. I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it. I especially like the way they hold the plants while talking.

Espostoa melanostele blooms were open, before I got the picture. Really, they were. Here are 4 spent blooms for your consideration instead.

Opuntia tuna-blanca in bloom. These will produce the most delicious fruit ever, if you can navigate those spines.

We’re delivering some big spiny cactus this afternoon to some designers that are making some spectacular concrete planters on steel bases, The Ranch Design Group.

Eriosyce occulta

Here’s another one with 2 flowers, and they’re non-standard color.

These are a variable species. Some are spiny, others quite spineless. The body color can be almost completely black, to a deep green color. You can see the flower color variation, but it can get even whiter than these. In habitat, they’re mostly underground, so very difficult to find unless they’re in bloom.

They rarely offset, so they’re grown from seeds. Moderately easy to grow indoors in a sunny window.

Sempervivums spilling out!

A satisfied customer walking out the door with one of our custom succulent wall panels.

Astrophytum myriostigma

Opuntia picardoi is one of the most dangerous of the prickly pears we grow. Sure it’s small, but bthat just makes it more deceptive. Big spiny cacti are easy to spot the danger from afar. This little guy, on the other hand, not so much. Not only do all those little spines come out into your skin, they’re also just really sharp and will cut you like a butterknife thru jello. Grape jello.

Nursery Dog

The Ledger in Lakeland Florida has this to say:

Among the finest succulents for windowsills are Echeveria species and hybrids.

Now I suppose we could argue about what is meant by the phrase, “among the finest” but that would be pedantic. Leave us to say that within a broad range of possible finest’s, Echeverias could be on a conceivable list. Like this one.

Echeveria pulidonis would certainly make a good windowsill plant, and I would put it on my list of the top 2000 finest succulents for windowsills, so sure – it qualifies!

Dudleya setchellii is included in the CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants on list 1B.1 (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere). It is listed by the Federal Government as Endangered (Feb 03,1995) (via Calflora).

But we’re growing it, and it’s flowering and hopefully we’ll get some seed this year.

Yay!

from WOAI in San Antonio, TX and not from Arizona.

Anyway, Nancy Cavender-Garcia says of this photo,

SAN ANTONIO – The shape and color of this flower makes for a beautiful image. The petals create lovely repetitive patterns framing the flower. The yellow color circles the red center making our eye flow to the center. The flower is centered in the image, yet the bug puts it just a little off-center. The photographer used a short depth of field that caused the green of the cactus to be out of focus and a soft background for the flower. Very nice image. Barbara Matchey, Copyright 2010 Barbara Matchey

Like the Agave in the post below, Sempervivums also bloom once and die, having propagated with many babies around the mother plant usually long before the dreaded bloom spike comes.

Kym Pokorny with The Oregonian has decided to try to save her Sempervivums from an untimely bloom and death cycle by chopping off the blooms. Somehow I don’t think this is going to work, but good luck, Kym!

7th Street
Agave potatorum about to bloom.

“Waiting for Romance” by Ryan Mosley

Painting Séance
Through July 24 at Grand Arts, 1819 Grand, Kansas City, MO 816-421-6887, grandarts.com

“Something might happen in one painting that affects the others.” The three largest canvases — “Wild Brew,” “Waiting for Romance” and “Target Practice” (an impossible still life depicting a large cactus growing from a stack of hats) — present the same Southwestern color palette and shared visual motifs: mustachioed frontiersmen, jumbles of cowboy boots, old-fashioned hats, a cream-colored background expanse. “I think it feels like something is about to happen,” Mosley says of the three paintings….

The cacti make up the exhibit’s most obvious theme. They grow from the ground, surrounding the figures, their arms gesturing from the edges of the compositions like the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts. “I’ve always been interested in figurative painting, and cacti are the most figurative plants,” he says. “It’s like they’re waving at you.”

“Taking Care of the Crops” by Ryan Mosley at Grand Arts

This is some impressive painting work. I won’t be able to make it to Kansas City, or to his gallery in London either. I will just have to be satisfied with this online selection.

The brand new Kickapoo Cavern State Park near Del Rio, Texas just opened and you can visit the caverns if you want, but I’ll be checking out the cactus.

At least 15 caves are located in the park, including Kickapoo Cavern, home to the state’s largest “speleotherm,” an eight-story tall column of limestone and the Stuart Bat Cave, roost of an estimated million Mexican Free-tailed Bats.

Oh, well, maybe I’ll check out the caves too.

The park is… home to an endangered cactus, the Tobusch fishhook cactus.

© Photo courtesy Paul M. Montgomery

Apparently it looks like Mars in Emery County, Utah, so the good folks at Disney/Pixar are filming Mars-scapes there. They key to the look? Cactus.

“The Factory Butte, and Swing Arm City sites are all located on Mancos Shale and it is this shale that makes the area suitable for the “Mars” environment.”

I mean it’s the shale that makes it look like Mars. And the cactus, too.

The primary site that John Carter Of Mars is filming on near Factory Butte is actually in the footprint of a small coal strip mine.

OK, so strip mining is a good way to turn Earth into Mars.

The Muddy Creek area, to be filmed by air,… was dotted with access roads for Uranium Development

And Uranium mining too. But what about the cactus?

In particular, three species of rare Cactus are present in surrounding areas. Pediocactus despainii, San Rafael cactus and Pediocactus winkleri, commonly known as Winkler’s cactus and Sclerocactus wrightiae, commonly known as Wrights Fishhook Cactus are very small cactus varieties that are difficult to see and therefore can be easily destroyed. These species are only indiginous to the Central and Eastern parts of Utah and are listed as Threatened or Endangered.

So did they step on the cactus? No word yet.

I have several echeveria and graptoveria which I bought from you and have just finished planting in my new garden. They look so much alike that I’m wondering what is the difference(s) between them, especially differences in what the mature plants will look like. (I was hoping for flat to the ground hen and chicks appearance, but perhaps I won’t be getting that?)

Thank you.
Carol (Vallejo)

Carol,
It depends which species you have, but generally the echeverias are the hen and chick style, stemless and on the ground, while the graptoveria do sometimes get a trailing stem. If you send me photos, I can confirm what your individual species will do.
Peter

I’m not at the nursery today, so I’ve decided to use the blog to pass along a message to Ian: We could use some more planted mini-terrariums for this weekend.

Yay!

Hi Kevin,

When you have a chance, can you tell me what these are? I got them from different places.

The first one was given to us, has beautiful bloom;

Second one hitch-hiked with another plant I bought, with a big round root under all that tentacles and had a ring of tiny yellow flowers a while ago;

3rd one I got from Target, reminds me of someone wiith a bad hair day;

4th one spread like waves/snakes.

I cannot find these from any books I have, so thought you might be able to help. Is it OK to trouble you? or is there another source I can ask about plants?

Thanks!

Lillian

Here are the attached photos:

Lillian,
You have:
149. Crassula falcata, also known as the propellor plant.

536. is a crested Euphorbia, possibly Euphorbia flanaganii

537. is definitely Euphorbia flanaganii, also known as Medusa’s Head – would certainly qualify as bad hair…

538. Tephrocactus articulatus v. papyracanthus, or the Paper-Spine Cactus.
Peter

Red, green and blue tinted plumeria flowers.

Dani sends along this photo via Bump of a sled she saw in Maine last week. She did not pay $50 for it.