Cactus Blog 

Oxford Street
Aloe saponaria

It’s always nice to have a wall to let plants hang over. It’s a very scenic style of gardening. Everyone should have a wall. We do.

A collected plant, at UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. The label is so clear in the photo that I daren’t type out the name for seeming repetitious. That’s just the way I am. But it sure is a pretty sedum. Whoops, there’s half the name.

Benjamin once was a puppy.
That’s me in the background.

Borrego’s Aloe Blog has some beautiful pictures of large aloes at the UC Irvine Arboretum.

It practically makes you feel like you’re in Africa.

The Ruth Bancroft Garden has a new entry garden. Ruth Bancroft answers your questions about her gardens in the Contra Costa Times:

Q: We like the look of your new garden alongside the gate on Bancroft Road, and we would like to do something similar in front of our house. Can you offer some tips?

A: Our entry garden is officially called the Lloyd Davis Entry Garden, after the late Lloyd Davis of Orinda, from whom many of the specimen plants came that were used in creating it. It features an array of cacti and succulents with a covering of gravel spread on the ground between them. This gravel is called “¾-inch Lodi” and came from Mt. Diablo Landscape Center in Concord.

You’ll have to read the rest of the article to find out her advice for replicating this garden at your home. I don’t want to spoil the surprise ending.

Adenium obesum
Usually our obesums have a pink bloom, sometimes even mostly white. This is the reddest one I’ve seen. So red, I had trouble getting the picture not to turn into mud, but I think I’ve captured it.

And yet, it sits on our counter and hasn’t sold yet. Someone saw it 5 minutes after I put it out on Saturday, and said they were coming back for it, but they haven’t yet. There are more than a dozen more blooms yet to come. I sound like a salesman.

Macy’s on State Street in Chicago has a large plant display for spring that features succulents.

Let’s see, I see Orchids of course, and an aloe and agave. Lot’s of Euphorbia tiriculi, maybe some rhipsalis and I suspect they must have some bromeliads too.

Continue reading “Macy’s Garden”

Shed Style wrote a short article for the LA magazine Angeleno which got edited down to one sentence. A long sentence, to be sure. But in the age of blogs, freelance writers now get to publish their own unedited manuscripts, or short articles as the case may be. Here’s my excerpted quote from the short article that was edited down in the magazine. Or you could read the whole thing at the link above.

We sometimes get questions that we have never gotten before. Like this one:

Q: Hi,

I have a bunch of cacti that I keep indoors (I live in NJ.) I have a large yucca species that has developed an infestation of tiny centipedes in the soil. How do I get rid of them without killing the plant?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks,

Anne

A: Anne,

Centipedes! Really, now. We recommend a soil drench with neem oil. It’s also sold as rose defense, which will work fine as a soil drench, but don’t spray it on cacti since they need 100% neem.

Peter

Lotus crassifolius var. otayensis – Otay Mountain Lotus

Herbaceous perennial. These furry grey stems are generally upright, but can lay prone as they grow. Stunning clusters of purple and white pea-sized flowers are bursting out in spring. Evergreen grey-green oblong leaves. It’s a lovely plant year-round, but a show-stopper right about now.

Native to San Diego County, California, rare in the wild.

The news is good in March, if you live in India.

I woke up early today. I’ve been trying to learn French recently and the nursery has just been too busy so I haven’t had the time to listen to the tapes. Je voudrais un petit café.

Our blog of the day is Slice of the Day, where they feature plants. This slice is an Epiphyllum, or orchid cactus. What they call the Dutchman’s Pipe Cactus. I’ve never heard of that common name, but anything is possible in the world of common names.

They’ve also included a flickr photo from yoel_tw.

Aloe striata
The blooms stalks have branched and the blooms are about open. The hummingbirds are hanging around waiting for the tips to pop open just that little bit that lets them in to get at the sweet sweet nectar.

The Palm Springs Desert Sun explains it all to you.

(Photo: Shirley Brenon, Special to The Desert Sun)

Buhlert began taking classes at The Living Desert University four years ago because she was from Northern California and wanted to learn more about plants she had never seen before. “When I heard Glenn Huntington say that ‘you don’t have to plant pansies and petunias’ it just rang my bell,” she explained. Buhlert is now a Master Desert Gardener and her yard has been certified as a Backyard Desert Habitat.

Now that you mention it, blooming aloes will attract hummingbirds.

Do you ever receive press releases? This one was written by a hotel chain, trying to attract visitors to Sydney.

Now that’s an invitation to travel if I’ve ever read one.

I wonder why I posted this today? Oh yeah, it mentioned the cactus, of course. Anything to do with the cactus and there I am, passing out press releases like they’re candy.

Well, that was satisfying at last. Delicious like candy.

The Las Vegas Review Journal (What’s with the 2 names, shouldn’t it be a review or a journal, but both? really?) posts cactus class listings. And I repost them. That’s just the kind of blogger that I am.

Grant Ave.
Aeonium urbicum

Low-growing ground cover, spreads pretty quickly. Lots of yellow flowers. You could plant a field of them, and then you’d have a succulent green field.

…You know, I’m trying to add more garden-writing-style writing to go with these photos, but really, all I want to do is add some wise-a** comments. It’s a real tension in my writing. Which will win out this spring in the great snark vs. garden-writing smackdown? Well, I think we already know the answer to that one.

For instance, yesterday I watched Mulholland Drive on DVD and it was less confusing than I had remembered from when it first came out. Back then I thought maybe it was all a dream from the last moments before the blonde woman dies, but now that just seems ridiculous. She’s confused all the way through. Even when she’s clearly imagining the world as she’d like it to be, rather than how it is, that doesn’t mean she’s dreaming. She’s just a little psychotic, that’s all. She really believes not just that she should be on the verge of becoming a star, but that she is.

Well, I have failed again. No snark at all in that paragraph. No garden-writing either.

We get questions from Oklahoma. It seems they want to grow plants outside, even in Oklahoma.

Q: Hi,

I live in Central oklahoma … (zone 7) I would love to have a succulent bed, the only thing I have are hen and chicks and they do great here… Can you recommend some items that I could order, that would be good for this area? My bed is about 3 foot wide and 18 feet long.. I want something really awesome looking, with low maintenance… Can you help?

Beautiful website.. best I have seen….

Annette

A: I would recommend Lewisia, which are zone 3, and have amazing blooms. We do have many different species of the Sempervivum (hen and chick) that would work. This summer we should have in Delosperma congestum which is hardy. Most of the sedums (all that we carry) are hardy. For Euphorbias, the spurges, like E. characias, and others, should all do fine. Kniphofias and maybe even Bulbines should work. For cactus, you could try Echinocereus viridiflorus, Opuntia fragilis, Opuntia basilaris.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Hap

A reporter from the Vancouver Sun visits Barcelona and the Gaudi buildings in he area, and also, just on the side, sees a cactus garden in passing. Who knew there were cacti in Spain?

Now that’s what I call a vacation. Of course, I would have taken pictures, while this Canadian reporter did not. Really, now, who can visit the Sagrada Familia and not take pictures? It’s practically heresy. Well, here’s on for you that I found on wikipedia, by Shawn Lipowski.

Euphorbia milii “Red Speckles”
So named for it’s red-speckled bracts. I think this is the last of these crown-of-thorn photos I’ll be posting for a little while.

(MSNBC, via Hullabaloo)

I hope you don’t mind that I post these quotes every now and then. It’s hard not to post something when there’s a major election coming up this year, you know.

But just in case, I’m adding images to the top of the quote posts.

Sansevieria francissii

Aeonium holochrysum(?)
Oxford Street, Berkeley

I love these sidewalk plantings. Succulents do really well in cracks and crevices. In this case, there’s a lot of soil behind that retaining wall, so the plants are fully rooted back there. But it does change the way the Aeoniums grow. These are usually a taller species, not one of the ground covers, but here in coming out of the base of a wall, they’re smaller.

Dead cactus in Tucson go rolling in the street, as if they were tumbleweeds. Who do they think they are? From the Arizona Daily Star we have this police report.

Photo: Jim Davis / arizona daily star

Sometime in the past few weeks, a 12-foot-tall saguaro toppled over from its perch among four other cacti planted in a wide median on Ina between North Shannon Road and North Camino de la Tierra….

A close inspection revealed the soil around the base of the saguaro had been infiltrated by the formation of an anthill.

I think there should be more police reports of a more “natural” nature. I’d like to see the reports for when the sand crabs invade the turtle egg nests. Who gets arrested for that? And how about a report of the swallows returning to Capistrano? When do we get a media report of that yearly event? Oh yeah, we get that every year, this week as it turns out. Never mind.

Portait of a Benjamin
Photo by Aunt Rachel

On top of the building is a big rooftop garden, practically a Green Roof, if you will.

And it’s City Hall. Now that’s a green idea. From AFP:

Now you know what an urban green roof looks like. If only I could get me some of that sweet sweet honey.

Mike from Korea has asked me about what “cultivated variety” or c.v. means tacked onto the end of a species name.

Q: I don’t exaclty understand what the “cultivated varitety” means.

Regards

Mike

A: Mike-

There are 2 basic ways hybrids are made:

1. Cross pollinate 2 known plants, and create what is known as a “hybrid,” i.e. graptoveria is a hybrid between a graptopetalum and an echeveria.

2. Select a naturally occuring variation. This is then called a “cultivated variety”.

For instance, there are many hundreds of hybrid echeveria species, some of which are “c.v.” or “cultivated varieties.”

If we don’t know what it is, we use the terms hybrid or c.v. interchangeably, since they are both just guesses. In general whichever way it was created, it is a hybrid.

Peter

I’m still working on fixing the slow blog problem, although it seems to be working pretty well this morning.

Reader Andreas has given me a clue. Soon, soon enough, I will have the problem resolved, or my name’s not Jeremiah.

Next, I have to deal with the evil Earthlink people who are screwing with my connection. Did I mention that they’re evil? And they smell.

So here’s an image for you:

Sedum pachyclados