Cactus Blog 

Hi,
Your blog came up in a Google image search for plant identification. I was hoping you could tell me a name for attached photo.

Thanks so much,
Kathryn

Kathryn,

Well the picture is extra tiny, but I think that’s an Agave attenuata.

Peter

People seem to love them some Sedums these days. The low groundcover varieties are very popular right now, and not just in the areas where they’re cold-hardiness is more important than the mild Bay Area climate, but right here in the Bay Area, where our coastal mild climate doesn’t test the hardiness of these Sedums at all, are they also very popular.

I wonder if I got the grammar of that last run-on sentence right? I could reread it and try to fix it, but that would hurt.

First up is a very colorful Sedum “Tricolor”, one of the S. spurium cultivars.

Check out the tape measure for scale! It’s  Sedum “Lemon Ball”, very chartreuse, stays chartreuse, doesn’t get red in sun, although otherwise superficially similar to S. “Angelina”, one of the S. rupestre cultivars.

Run-on sentences for everyone!

Finally we have the not very colorful right now Sedum “Purpurea” although the Sedum “Aureum” is right now the most popular of Sedums, but this one does get purple in sun, but not too much sun or they wilt. And this one is onje of the S. hispanicum cultivars.

Dasylirion wheeleri
Desert Spoon

These never get this tall here in the Bay Area. Generally they can get 6 feet across, but with very little to no trunk at all. These have been growing in Arizona, and it’s true what they say about Arizona – it gets hot. Some plants need extra heat to grow to their full potential.

These plants do look like they want to get out of those pots and into the ground so those roots can ease out a little bit, or a lot….

I wonder what you would think of fancy succulent planters? Would you always like them, like some of them, or hate them all? But wait, don’t answer yet! What if I told you that they were fancy Troll succulent planters and fancy Brick succulent planters. What then?

You say you would first have to see a picture???

OK.

Here they go…

Brick

Troll

The bricks have some Echeverias and a Haworthia too. The trolls are mostly planted with Haworthias, and a Euphorbia too.

Is it a late winter bloom or an early spring bloom? I wish I knew, but then that would make me a magician.

Echeveria setosa

Echeveria agavoides

The weird thing is that they are both supposed to be summer boomers, so they are quite confused regardless. California will do that to Mexican species sometimes. Just imagine how the Madagascar plants must feel.

California Lilacs are not just lilac color. First for comparison we have a lilac colored Ceanothus.

Ceanothus “Vandenberg”
Santa Barbara Ceanothus
Native to California
Evergreen shrub

Sun: Full Sun
Water: Low
Size: 5ft. x 5ft.
Small dark green leaves, compact clusters of dark blue flowers in late winter. Deer resistant. Hardy to 15F.

Ceanothus “Snow Flurry” is the white flowered one.
White Wild Lilac
Native to California
Evergreen shrub

Sun: Full Sun
Water: Low, some in summer
Size: 12 max.

Provides seeds that native birds thrive on. Huge sprays of brilliant white flowers in spring. Rich green leaves. Perfect for Bay Area gardens – drought-tolerant, easy to grow.

Ceanothus “Ray Hartman” is too blue for my eyes.
Mountain Lilac
Native to California
Evergreen shrub

Sun: Full Sun
Water: Low
Size: 20’max.

Light blue flowers, dark green leaves. Fast-growing, completely drought-tolerant. Cold and heat hardy. Do not irrigate.

Howe Street

Aloe reitzii? ferox? and a Cotyledon.

Large concrete and moss sculpture by Mineo Mizuno at the Samuel Freeman Gallery in Santa Monica. The show is from a few years ago, so you won’t be able to see them in person, but you can visit the website and see more.

From Bundt comes a story about Lithops in the Lifestyles Section.

Lithops als aufregende Zimmerpflanze

You might think I would run this through a translator so I could see what this article is really about. You never know! It could be about how to grow Lithops for fun and gardening, or maybe it’s for some nefarious purpose – the Germans are after all a lot closer to Ukraine than we in the US are!

I don’t know what that has to do with Ukraine, but it is a current topic of news, so maybe, you know, maybe.

Further into the article we get this.

Ursprünglich sind lebende Steine, die sich von Frühjahr bis Herbst in der Wachstumsphase befinden, in Südafrika beheimatet.

I still don’t know what that means, but it also seems like it’s probably something innocuous about growing Lithops.

Nopalea dejecta (Cactaceae) Collection: S.F. Curtis, Cuba; flowering joiont.
Artist: Eaton, Mary Emily – Date unknown – watercolor

From the Catalog of Botanical Illustrations, Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution

Plate Number: 1725
Publication: The Cactaceae Vol. 1 Pl 4, Fig 4
Client: Britton, N.L. and Rose, J.N. – Size: 11×14

Found on Facebook.

Random Cactus cupcakes posting. My sister posted these to my Facebook timeline but I don’t know the original source. Are they for sale? I don’t know! Is there a recipe? Still don’t know. Delicious? I assume so.

Since my sister is vegan, do you think that means these are vegan? Since they were posted on facebook do you think that means they’re viral? Since they’re Cactus do you think I can name all the species?

The Pitcher Plant Project has some great photos of some early blooming Pitcher Plants, being in the Sarracenias.

Buds!

Indeed they are, and some of the plants are budding before they grow spring pitchers, but that’s just normal.

Life on the Balcony wants to show you how to…

Hello 1970! How to Make a Tiny Terrarium and Macrame Hanger

To be fair, it’s more like they wanted you to make this last year before Christmas, I just didn’t get around to sharing this with you until today, a long time after Christmas indeed.

Three pretty Sedums for your enjoyment. Sedums are also known as Stonecrops and are found around the world. North America, South America, Asia and Europe. I don’t know about Africa, and probably not Antartica, though they are native to Alaska in the Southeast portion of the state.

Sedums are in the well traveled Crassulaceae family, which consists of about 1500 species, of which fully 600 are Sedums. And then there are the cultivars. 2 of the 3 below are cultivars. And then there are the shrubby Sedums, possibly moved recently into Hylotelephium, which have large pretty bloom sprays on top of thick succulent leaved stalks.

These are not Hylotelephium-type Sedums. But they are 3 different subtypes nontheless.

First up is Sedum “Little Missy” which is a small rosette with flat leaves. This attractive groundcover is prolific and wqill get quite red in the sunshine.

Sedum hispanicum “Purpurea” is a classic shade-tolerant, freeze-tolerant groundcover stonecrop that is very popular with the kids today. Small tubular leaves on trailing stems.

Sedum furfuraceum is one of the thick leaved sedums, quite rounded and pleasantly colorfulized.

Euphorbia “Tiny Tim”

European hybrid
Evergreen Perennial

Sun: Moderate
Water: Drought tolerant
Size: 10″-14″ tall x 14″-20″ wide

Blooms chartreuse flowers Summer through Fall with deep green foliage and red tips. Deer resistant. Compact Dwarf species. Hardy to 5°F.

Are succulent events coming to your hometown? Maybe. Debra Lee Baldwin is traveling this spring, and maybe she’ll be coming to your hometown. And then you can have a wonderfully succulent spring time in your hometown. But not otherwise.

My Spring-Summer Whistle Stops

Here’s where and when I’ll give presentations. If your city’s on the list, please save the date!

Fri. and Sat., Feb. 28-Mar. 1, Spring Home & Garden Show, Del Mar Fairgrounds, San Diego~~~Attend the Spring Home/Garden Show as my guest. Print a free pass for two. $16 value.~~~

Thurs. and Fri., March 20-21, San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, San Mateo Convention Center

Sat., March 22, San Diego Master Gardener’s Spring Seminar

Tues., Wed. and Thurs., April 1-3, Epcot Center International Flower Festival, Orlando, FL

Sat. and Sun., May 17-18, 2014, Eco-Xpo, San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, CA

Sat. and Sun., May 31-June 1, Sunset Celebration, Menlo Park, CA

Fri. and Sat., June 6-7, Succulent Celebration at Waterwise Botanicals nursery, Escondido, CA

Sat., June 28, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis

I’ll be signing all three of my books (including the new one, Succulents Simplified) at all events.If you enjoyed one of my presentations, I’d be grateful if you’d post a comment on the Great Garden Speakers website. Many thanks!

That’s a lot of California hometowns, including two in the Bay Area, so you know you should all move out here to California.

Stannage Ave., Berkeley

This cactus is a Opuntia. Probably an Opuntia tuna-blanca which will get large orange flowers and large red edible cactus fruit. Tunas for everyone! Delicious.

Tillandsia linearis (Bromeliaceae) Collection: , Brazil; flowering habit.
Artist: Mee, Margaret

From the Catalog of Botanical Illustrations, Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution

Plate Number: 1370
Publication: The Bromeliads. 1969. Plate 6; “Margaret Mee”. Ed. Sylvia de Botton Brautigam et al. Rio de Janeiro: ArtePadilla 2006. Page 166

Remarks: The painting was displayed in the traveling exhibit: “Margaret Mee: Return to the Amazon” (1/16/96 – 8/20/99). The painting is matted in 30″ x 39″ matt and is on loan to Eva Pell, Under Secretary for Science, Smithsonian Institution and is in Room 325, Smithsonian Castle. Loan is through Richard Stamm, Curator, SI Castle Collections (11/19/10).

Beautiful painting! Click the image to embiggen, or click through to the link for more Tillandsia illustrations. Most of the Smithsonian botanical images I’ve posted in the past were old, maybe 100 years or so, but not this one, this is recent. So if you are recently also illustrating botanical subjects let me know!

Stannage Ave., Berkeley

A nice garden with Agave attenuata and a red-flowering Penstemon. Nice mounds.

Leucadendron salignum “Blush”
Willow Cone Bush
 
 
Native to South Africa
Evergreen Shrub

Sun: Full Sun
Water: Low
Size: 3 to 5 feet

Stunning shrub with bright red foliage and cone flowers. Needs full sun and fast-draining soil. Hardy to 25F.

Just kidding! The Bay Area stops at the Berkeley border for my Berkeley Succulent posts.

Stannage Ave., Berkeley

Crassula tetragona is the Pine Tree Succulent. And here we have a nice grove of them with a ground cover of oxalis.

Its the Rooster-on-the-Field Edition of our late night videos. No mere kitten videos or pig-horse friendship videos for us!

Aeonium Cyclops flowering

Hi

I think I know the answer to this but thought I’d ask anyway. Is there anything I can do propagation-wise with the flower?

Thanks –
Karen

Karen,

Sorry but there’s not much you can do with that once it starts blooming. If there were other branches going, you could cut off the flowering one and the others would have a better chance of survival. You can still cut it off and it’s possible you would get branches from the cut end, but Cyclops is not a prolific brancher, so you might be better off just enjoying the bloom stalk.

Peter

Stannage Ave., Berkeley is well planted with succulents.

Agave attenuata well placed against the house to help it through the occasional freeze.