Cactus Blog 

Kathy sends along this photo of one of our Echinocereus grandiflora hybrids at the nursery. This is one we call “Tropical Pink”.

Nice shot. That’s a Ferocactus pottsi in back to the left and  a Dudleya attenuata behind to the right. In fact, you really can’t even see the Echinocereus, except a bit at the bottom.

Otto came into the store today very excited about getting a Big Eye Dummy. He went right for Slicka.

And here he is pulling Slicka’s eye right off! Shocking!

It’s a good thing Otto’s a friend.

Russell St., Berkeley
Probably was an Agave americana.

That yard between the apartments has no other plantings. I wonder how long they’ll leave the dead agave there as a centerpiece? What will they eventually replace it with?

The Examiner has a terrible slide show to go with this article about container gardening. I don’t recommend it. Here, have some of their container ideas instead:

• Containers are portable.
• Containers can come inside for the winter.
• Containers (are) decorative.
• Containers… showcase a plant.

That’s enough for me. I’m off to go garden in a container.

Sacramento Street

Opuntia subulata (Austrocylindropuntia subulata) is the big centerpiece of this Berkeley apartment building streetfront. But there’s lots of Crassula ovata and an Aloe nobilis and a nice big Aloe arborescens in the background too.

Cone Boy only has one weekend to go, and then the stitches come out and the cone goes away. Yay!

The Alessi Cactus! Fruit Bowl is now on sale at New York stores.

I wonder why you should care about this. It is a pretty design, and not just a cactus name, but it does look like a cactus design.

Gardening Gone Wild is having a photo contest, entries due 7/22.

And the prize is a collection of 8 luscious succulents, cold hardy all, from High Country Gardens.

This month’s theme appears to be Flowering Trees.

In British Columbia this weekend? Then don’t miss the succulent class.

Saturday, July 18, 10 a.m. Container Gardening With Succulents with Faye Ford. Succulents grouped together in a container resemble a tiny, perfect tapestry of colour and texture. Faye will show participants how to create their own unique planting. Cost of $35 plus GST includes all supplies.

I think it’s in Victoria, but I can’t be sure.

Hi Cactus Jungle…

I’m curious why two of the three cacti are looking yellow.

I’ve given them some liquid seaweed…but I’m not sure
if that will help this specific yellowing problem

thanks
brian

Brian,

The plants look fine. In fact they look great. The color variation (as best we can tell from the photo) is sun and growth. The kelp will help them green up further over time.

Bonding over Lizards had a contest to name a cactus (actually a sempervivum) and the results are in: Norbert. I’m shocked.

Myrtillocactus geometrizans

These blueish cacti have blue-berry like fruit. And I can tell you here and now, they are delicious. If you are ever trapped in a desert-like environment, in Mexico, and you must find some food, I would try these. Now while it is true that tunas, i.e. prickly pear fruit, are even more delicious, unfortunately they are covered in spines, whereas these are not.

The name Whortleberry is also common to a type of berry-bearing heath from Europe, as well as a particular type of American blueberry. So much to learn.

It’s dragonfruit season! Yay! It comes from the hylocereus cactus, a few different species and colors but this seems to be H. undatus.

How to eat Dragon Fruit. The simplest way to eat Dragon Fruit is to cut the Dragon Fruit in half and scoop out the juicy sweet flesh with a spoon. Dragon Fruit makes a delicious fruit juice and can also be added to salads to give them a touch of the exotic.

Cactus can be so different than what you expect – here we have a cactus growing very nicely in the jungles of Thailand. Well, this looks more like an orchard, but it’s still pretty wet there, and these cacti are thriving and providing a lot of delicious dragonfruit.

Calibanus hookeri, a caudiciform member of the Agave family (Agavaceae) which we already said was maybe actually in the Lily family, but let’s not get that started all over again.

Here are the blooms. This is a male plant, as we can tell by the blooms. For some reason all our plants that we see bloom are male, and so that explains why we do not get seed.

As you can clearly see with this super slo-mo closeup, there are stamens there, composed of the little pollen-covered anthers on top of the slender filaments, but no pistils, i.e. the often quite graphic stigma in the center on top of the ovules.

Science!

A Press Release out of Salinas, California reads:

Root 68 will feature in July some of Andy Boy’s newest specialty products such as cactus pear balsamic vinaigrette,… cactus pear vinegar, cactus pear sorbet and more.

I wonder what Root 68 is? And Andy Boy? Will they sell these at Berkeley Bowl? I keep looking for cactus pear vinegars there, since they have a huge selection of specialty vinegars, but nothing.

With a little bit of the googling, this is what I find.

Root 68 is a produce store in Salinas.

Andy Boy is a grower.

Then who is putting out these vinegars?

Hello,

Attached are two pictures of a plant in the garden in front of my townhouse. Having a few problems and really don’t know what to do. Don’t know if they are getting to much water, not enough water, or to much sun. The garden has sun in the morning for about 4 – 6 hours depending on the time of year. The garden was planted around August 2006.

What are you suggestions?

Thanks for your assistance.
Sarah

Sarah,

Your Aeonium is still doing fine – it bloomed! These Aeoniums will put a lot of energy into the bloom spikes, and then that particular branch will die off. So you can go ahead and cut back that branch as far down as you like. In the future, if you cut it off before the blooms get too far, you can sometimes save the branch.

hi hap –

attached are pictures of our cactus. one snapshot includes the white spots (scales), and the other picture is of the browning at the bottom of the plant.

please call to share your thoughts.

thanks,
tish

Tish,

As I said on the phone it looks like the cactus has caught an infection (think of it as it caught a cold…). The best “Home Remedy” that I can suggest is to spray it once a week with the following:

1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 cup hot water

Mix well, spray to the point of run-off. It works best if you spray at night, after it is dark, since cacti keep their stoma closed until night so they can conserve water, so by spraying at night the mix can get in to the skin. Spray once a week for at least three treatments.

The scale insects can be cleaned off with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. It will dissolve the glue that they use to keep themselves attached to the plant.

If the plant does not look like it is improving by the end of the month please give me a call and we can try something more agressive.

Take care,

Hap

Salvia “Allen Chickering”

I see we have more native wildflower perennials in bloom. I see that the photos keep coming, no matter.

This one smells really nice – the fragrant leaves make a nice tea. The lavender flower whorls make this a Bay Area garden favorite. Not to mention that it’s deer resistant and attracts butterflies. This plant has everything. But wait! Don’t make your wildflower decisions yet! Did I mention it makes an herbal tea? I did? What was that, kid? I can’t hear you, speak up a bit. Hey! You kids! Get off my lawn!

So I’m reading this article about a wildfire in Arizona that was not a controlled burn, and how it may have damaged populations of endangered cactus. But it’s all good because the endangered cactus had prevented them from starting a controlled burn in the first place, so an uncontrolled burn that damaged the endangered plants was ideal for them. Or something like that.

Since the early 1990s, she said, “We have been unable to (use a prescribed burn) because of the listing of the Pima pineapple cactus.”…

It burned close to the Tohono O’odham’s most sacred site and may have killed some endangered cacti.

It was mostly a good thing, say fire managers.

People really don’t care about endangered species. Anything to get around protecting them.

So you probably already know that Euphorbia sap, or latex, is poisonous. Some of the plants are merely irritating, while others are deadly.

We do occasionally recommend Euphorbia characias on the edge of a garden to help keep cats away, since it’s like cayenne pepper to the cat, but not particularly dangerous. But please don’t get it on your eyes or lips because it can be very painful.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, euphorbias.

Here’s a website that list species and levels of dangerousness, and lots of individual stories too.

Mr. Subjunctive also has a good series of posts about poisonous plants, that I linked to previously.

Lupinus arboreus

I blogged this Northern California native wildflower recently (way back in May) but they’re still in bloom, so I am being forced to blog this again, now aren’t I? Someone must be at fault here.

My sister’s front landscaping is done. They live in Austin, TX which is far enough away from Berkeley that we weren’t able to help.

But I see they have at least one succulent, an agave that will get quite large in a few years, probably A. americana. That might be another agave, or yucca, in front. Hard to tell.

Yay! I hope you enjoy.

Cactus mean
time satisfies

Summer days
go fastly by

Black ink
on my fingers

Just like
Mom used to make

Penstemon heterophylla “Margarita BOP”

This California native perennial is a low shrubby 2 foot border plant, with abundant bright blue flowers through spring and summer. Long-lived, hardy to 10°, prefers lots of sun and little water. Now that’s the kind of plant we like.

I wonder what a garden blogger would say about this plant? Barbara at Wild Suburbia has some beautiful wildflower pictures, including this particular penstemon variety.

Debra Lee Baldwin tells you all you need to know about barrel cactus in the LA Times.

10 ways to use barrel cactus in water-wise gardens
No. 3: Their shape can contrast nicely with taller columnar cactuses.
Photo: Debra Lee Baldwin

As usual with Debra, the photos are to die for. And the sharkskin agave is cute too.

These Neoregelias are a stunning group of small bromeliads. Hardy and luscious, great for terrariums. And what do you do if you forgot to water it and it starts to dry up? Well, let me tell you it is as easy as soaking it for 8 hours and watch those thick leaves come back to life. The centers of the plant are a favorite place to store a bit of extra water for your geckos, if you’re going on vacation. What, you don’t have geckos? Oh.

Nevermind.

So this one is Neoregelia puntissima v. rubra. Rubra, indeed.