Cactus Blog 

Today’s Costa Rican plant is an orchid. And there’s that wonderful yellow-green color that could lead one to call this orchid species by a name like viridis. But don’t even try, cause the orchid collectors will complain that you don’t know what you’re talking about. They do that you know.

Haworthia pygmaea

Looks a lot like H. retusa, but then don’t they all.

This little festival of haworthias has been fun. So. Let the fun continue! More haworthias! More!

An ecospace studio provides a stylish, multi-purpose solution… It has an organic low maintenance sedum planted roof.

Now that’s progress we can believe in.

I wonder if it comes with the lounge chairs out front?

Hi Peter,
As we were just discussing on the phone, I have an Echeveria hybrid that I purchased from your fine company back in June. As you can see from the photos, since then it has grown quite tall and I am wondering what I can do for it. Also, the second photo shows the top of the trunk that split yesterday. What have I done wrong and what can I do for the split trunk?
Thank you very much for your time.

Nathan

Nathan-
As we discussed, it does appear that your echeveria is not getting enough sunlight. The split developing at the top is because it is top heavy, and because the stem is not strong enough. What I recommend is waiting til late March, if possible (if the head is about to break off then don’t wait) and then cutting the rosette off with about 6″ off stem, clearing off the bottom leaves as necessary. Spray the cut end with household peroxide to help it heal and keep out of the sun for 1 week to let it dry. Then plant about 4″ deep into fresh dry soil, and wait another week before starting to water. Make sure the plant is in a warm sunny window and it should begin to root pretty quickly. Given the thickness of the echeveria stems, we often use a rooting hormone to help the plant root faster, but it’s not necessary.

You can then cut the rest of the stem down to about 3″ above the soil, removing all dead leaves, and the rooted stem will probably grow new rosettes. Spray the cut end with the household peroxide also, and keep out of direct sun until the tip heals a bit.

In general, we recommend these echeverias have 4 hours of direct sun per day, so a south or west facing window is ideal.

Let us know how it goes,
Peter

It turns out the word I’ve been using for years, “elonated”, which I learned from Hap, is not a word at all. I think it was a combination of the “elongation” of stems from “etiolation” that Hap mushed together into “elonation”.

In other words, I’ve been telling customers that their plants are “elonated” because they aren’t getting enough sun. It’s easier to say than “etiolated” and maybe I should just continue with our made-up word.

Did I mention we saw orchids while traipsing through the rain forests of Costa Rica?

This one shouldn’t be too hard to identify. Anyone want to try?

Haworthia reinwardtii

Finally, a different type of haworthia – no more of those small stemless groundcover rosettes that grow better in shade. Now we have a small stemless vertical rosette that grows better in shade, but can also handle a bit more sun, should you so choose. Also, they get up to about 8″ tall! Big time! Clusters of them!

I’m feeling jaded these days; reading so many newspaper articles about cactus and succulents over the years has me bored. I want better pictures, more species featured. Hard-hitting news about cactus. You know what I mean?

Whispering Meadows Garden Club had its February meeting at the home of member Donna….

Valentine’s refreshments were served after Donna gave an interesting program on succulents she displayed in her sun-room.

Now that’s some news I can use, straight out of Fremont.

Dear Sirs,

This could be my third e-mail to you guys regarding strange cactus disease/bug/fungus (all of which were generously answered). Hopefully this isn’t becoming annoying. I do appreciate your time and check in to your blog frequently. Here’s the latest.

Two photos of a Myrtillocactus pup. This is the first trouble I’ve had with it. Seems to have some kind of big orange spot? Its not a “scar” like other spots that occur. Any suggestions, I’d hate to lose this one.

The second cactus I can’t ID. I do know it may have burnt a bit this summer (you can sort of tell from one photo to the other). It appears like this one maybe toast (the black spots appear to be brown-rot like, but I cant say for sure). I worry the winter is too far away before I can re-pot. Even so the problems appear to be high on the cactus.

Both cactus are in a greenhouse in Oregon, which we keep dry (and usually bug free believe it or not!?!!?). It doesn’t get cooler than 50 and we open it up during sunny days. This winter I have been limiting water to approximately monthly, or as they needed. I don’t think overwatering is an issue but who knows.

Any input is appreciated.
Thanks
Matt

Matt,
Happy to help when we can.

The Myrtillocactus looks like it has Rust, which is a fungus. We treat with neem oil. You can alternate with a teaspoon of baking soda and a quart of warm water, sprayed on.

The other cactus, probably an Echinopsis, may have the same disease, or another fungus, just further along. You can try to treat the same way, but the prognosis is not as good.

Please note: Where you are using smooth pebbles as a mulch, that is going to keep the plants wetter in the winter. We prefer a rough stone, like lava which dries out faster.

Good luck
Peter

Cloud Forest Orchid

Haworthia fouchei appears to be an old name no longer in use. Some may group it into H. retusa but I don’t want to. I see subtle differences in our retusas and foucheis, so I shall always think of them as different species. Some may call me stubborn, but I prefer to think of myself as strong-willed. I shall continue to think of myself as strong-willed no matter what some others may call me, to my face or behind my back. As an interesting aside, my hebrew school teacher used to call me Pedro.

Yes, yes, we all have travel woes, like the time I forgot to take my tiny keychain knife off my keychain before flying (more below). So here’s someone with a column who has a cactus jelly tale to tell, a prickly run-in with the TSA.

Given the throngs of shoeless penitents getting themselves processed like so many heads of cattle, and the $15 check-in fee per bag, I opted for the TSA confiscating my prickly pear jelly.

I’m sure those TSAers had some nice toast for lunch.

As I was saying above, they were going to confiscate my small knife, which cost about $25, so I went to the newsstand, bought an envelope and put the knife in and gave the woman there $10 and asked her to mail it to me. And she did! Woohoo!

You wouldn’t think residents of Phoenix would need to be told to plant desert plants to save water, but then if you thought that you clearly haven’t been to Phoenix. From ABC’s KNXV-TV

A desert landscape can save hundreds of dollars a year

“After a few once-a-month waterings, a cactus will take care of itself,” says Rilé Leblanc, otherwise known as the Cactus Doctor.

I find such advice to be quite astute.

Out of Denver, we find a homeowner with a sense of the absurd. Via Kenny Be’s Yard Arteology it’s Downspout Saguaro sculptures.

These carefully crafted cacti are the work of a yard artist who has a soldering gun and a keen sense of how man-made materials mimic mother nature

Click through to see the amazing photo.

Haworthia marumiana is from South Africa. The rosettes are small, only about 3″ across; but in shade, like this one, they’re wide open, and measure up to 3.2″ across. We like growing our haworthias in shade so much we put them in the shade tolerant section of the nursery. Most people don’t know there are shade tolerant succulents.

in the UK. Same as always, I always say.

South-west England’s usually-mild climate allows Mediterranean and southern hemisphere plants to grow.

But after the coldest January in Devon and Cornwall for more than a decade…  At the sub-tropical Glendurgan gardens, near Falmouth, a third of the plants have been lost or damaged. Succulents… were worst hit.

Well then, maybe they should be growing more of the cold hardy succulents like sempervivums and delospermas and fewer of the aloes and aeoniums. Did they ever think of that?

That was pretty rude of me. I apologize to all who were offended. And if you weren’t offended, then what were you thinking!?!

It seems like this may be Costa Rica Orchid week at the blog. And there are still more Haworthias coming in the afternoons too.

We saw a whole lot of blooming orchids on our recent trip to Costa Rica. Here we start with one up in the Cloud Forests of Monteverde. There will be more. Of course most of my orchid bloom photos did not come into focus since the flowers can be so small and the plants are way up in the trees and I didn’t have a tripod with me. And more than that, no names are provided since I haven’t a clue which of the many hundreds of native orchids this is.

iZen Garden Version 1.7… users can now place… butterflies, cacti, and succulents into their gardens.

Good to know. Now you know. See, we provide quite the hi-tech service here at the cactusblog. I feel like patting myself on the back a little for this wonderful little gem of a news story that I am rambling on about right here, right now.

Peperomia rotundifolia has a number of common names, including Yerba Linda and creeping peperomia, creeping buttons, royal velvet plant, and my favorite the Radiator Plant. So you can tell that this is a well travelled plant.

Here we see a fully blooming specimen creeping along a tree branch  in it’s original habitat high up in the Cloud Forests of Costa Rica, although it’s range runs from Mexico to Brazil. My book also says it can be found in Tanzania, but that can’t be right.

From Channel 9 News in Denver

There are many dozens of fascinating succulents native to Africa. 

Indeed there are. However, I would recommend repotting that lovely Pachypodium into a terra cotta pot that will breath better than a glazed pot with attached saucer, and never use green moss as a top dressing! What are you thinking!

In Colorado.

Then I added some lovely sage green tile to the floor and began growing succulents and cacti out on my new sun porch because they could handle the lower night temperatures.

Truly a lesson for us all.

Haworthia cymbiformis

Man, these are hard to identify. We had this labeled H. caespitosa, which has been renamed H. turgida. But this clearly isn’t H. turgida. It looks a lot more like the plants we have had in the past that we called H. cymbiformis, but now I’m thinking the older ones were really H. cymbiformis variegata, which leads me to think these are in fact H. cymbiformis.

Did you follow that logic? No? Well, just keep in mind that whatever I tell you here, I’m just making it up, and so is everyone else.

I have a beatiful euphoria cactus that my daughter bought for me last mothers day[may of 2008]- it grew beatifully during the summer but now the leaves have turned brown and fallen over. I’m devistated! Can it be brought back to life? I thank you for your response!
Norma

Norma,
If it is a Euphorbia, then the plant is deciduous, and probably has just lost its leaves for the winter. However, if you’d like to send me a digital photo I can take a look.
Peter

The follow-up here was that the plant wasn’t just losing leaves, but entire branches were collapsing, however Norma wasn’t able to send photos, so the best we could do was offer this advice:

Norma,
Unfortunately I can’t really diagnose any further without seeing pictures.
In general, you can cut the dead top portions off and let the lower portions heal. Be sure to get all the dead and rotting parts. Spray with household peroxide to help the wounds heal.
Peter

The rich and fascinating variety of living things in the Galapagos islands has been revealed in its greatest-ever detail by researchers who, for the first time, have compiled a list of all the islands’ 4,388 species….

They include unique types of prickly pear cactus, which have developed into bizarre shapes and sizes in response to their location on the cut-off islands.

Some have evolved into trees, up to 12 metres high, and others have grown spines as soft as hair. Their fruits and flowers provide an important food for Darwin’s famous finches….

There is also Lonesome George – the sole remaining Pinta tortoise.

In New Zealand? But I thought they were all mild mannered there, judging from that zany show Flight of the Conchords.

It was interesting to see the spin they put out on the latest draft management plan for the Botanical Gardens in Saturday’s paper….

Apparently they will remove a lot of the cacti and replace them with succulents at a cost of approximately $75,000. Can we afford this?

A hot and heated discussion indeed. Oh wait…

If this is what you want, then you should tell the Gisborne District Council.

But if it is not what you want, then you should tell them that as well.

Well, that was pretty polite of them. Nevermind.