Cactus Blog 

On Nov. 25, a seldom-seen Southwest Florida cactus species will be listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service…

“It was probably never super-abundant,” wildlife service botanist David Bender said. “Of the populations known historically, they’ve declined from numbers in the hundreds to double or single digits.”

Also known as prickly apple cactus, west coast prickly apple and yellow prickly apple, the aboriginal prickly apple is found on coastal berms and spoil mounds, Indian shell mounds, maritime hammocks and coastal grasslands.

The cactus, by the way, is the Harrisia aboriginum

Cactus and Succulents!

Yuccas and Pachycereus! (and an aloe too)

Peter,

Thanks again for reserving my ‘Ebony’

Please find attached the 2 cacti that I cannot ID without help. Let me know if I have something worth dividing, planting or tossing.

  

Thanks,

John

John,

The one with the smaller stems is Parodia leninghausii. This will have a lot of beautiful big yellow flowers. These can safely be divided and propagated in the spring.

The more sprawling one is probably an Echinopsis, but I wouldn’t be able to ID the species until it blooms. It’s probably easy to propagate from stem cuttings. Both look like they need to get out of the wood boxes and into something bigger. I would generally wait until March to repot these.

Peter

Yucca blooms in Berkeley can be hard to capture since they’re so high up. These were probably 15 feet high.

Yucca elephantipes.

I’ve gone ahead and revamped our Cactus Jungle website. Phew!

We have over 1400 plant pages and over 4000 images, so they haven’t all been updated yet, but the rest of the site is fully new and revised and the plant pages will follow behind over the next few weeks. 1400 is a lot of pages to update!

Nursery Dog

We have a few larger specimens of the white-spined version of the classic golden barrel. We call it Echinocactus grusonii “White Ghost”. Some prefer to call it c.v. alba or even v. albispinus! Those people are ridiculous.

The golden-spined species is probably the most commonly propagated species of all time. But did you know that its native habitat in Queretaro, Mexico has been nearly eliminated by the construction of a dam?

More Cactus Costumes from the internets! I don’t own these! Not the costumes and not the pictures! I don’t sell them either! Enjoy!

Holy Cow it’s the same costume as yesterday, but in Adult size! And this time we have a link to a website that sells them and has it in stock. For a very reasonable $90. Well, maybe reasonable is a relative term.

I think we could get that one for Keith to wear at the store on a regular basis. At least on the weekends.

Burda Style’s cactus costume comes with a story.

When I asked my son what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said, “a saguaro cactus.” ?? Sure, no problem 😉 lol! It took a whole lot of fiberfill to stuff the channels. A big hit though, he loved it! Only one person asked him if he was Larry the Pickle from Veggie Tales.

Good Job!

Finally we have another little kid in a cactus costume. A baby! And the costume is available for sale on ebay. Quality!

Every year I see the quality of the top cactus costumes in the country gets better, so if you want to be featured in next years post, or maybe in a November followup, send along your photos ASAP!

Here are some photos of the nursery back in 2006. We were a lot smaller back then.

You can see we had space on the retail floor for troughs of cactus that were growing. Those have all been moved offsite now to make room for more plants to sell. Some people miss the display gardens, but what are you going to do.

Our first Rare Plant/Houseplant Greenhouse was pretty lightweight. In fact it fell over the first winter that we had a heavy wind.

I miss the Little Red Wagon.

Every year I post the best of the Cactus Costumes I find around the nets. These are not my costumes, I don’t make them I don’t sell them I don’t own them. I borrow the pictures so you can enjoy the sights of the best of the Cactus Costumes every year. Like this year!!!

First up is Laura D. out of Washington. Nice! How did she get those giant curved arms to stay up?

Here’s one that looks like it was once for sale at a store, but the page doesn’t exist anymore, just the image remains online. Looks like it was a very reasonably priced costume with flowers attached.

And finally for today we have a Quilter’s pair of cute little kids! Oh, and they’re wearing homemade cactus costumes. If you click through the link you can also find the amazing Blowfish Costumes.

Did you wonder where a George H.W. Bush might have gotten cactus socks from yesterday’s post? I don’t know. But here are more cactus socks for your perusal and these are for sale online too. Not from us so I can’t vouch for them.

Special extra Lizard Socks after the break… (more…)

Who wears cactus socks? Why it’s a presidentially famous Friend of Bill Clinton who donated them to charity. You’ll have to click through to see whose legs are attached to those feet. And the uncropped picture even shows all the way up to the face.

Austrocylindropuntia verschaffeltii, formerly known as an Opuntia, is a small cholla from South America. Those little tubular red-purple things are leaves and they are only on the new growth – that’s how you know this is healthy! – and will drop off as the stems age. They get orange flowers, almost the same color as California Poppies.

These are a short plant, getting at most 12″ tall. Generally considered Bolivian, but also found South to Argentina.

While in the Opuntioideae Subfamily of Cactus, they are different than the Opuntias proper because they have cylindrical stems and are lacking the spine sheaths of the North American Chollas (Cylindropuntia).

Hi Peter,
We were wondering about these two cacti given to us by friends. The tall one on the left seems to want to branch (we got a cutting off a 3-4 foot tall potted specimen). The short guy we think is a gymnocalyceum, and have always been a bit puzzled by its odd coloration (kind of dayglo yellow and pink). It was potted in fine sand and really suffering when we got it 2 years ago. Not sure what either of their specific needs are (minimum tolerated temp, sun exposure, etc).

Thanks for your help!
Marion

Marion,

The tall one is a Cereus. The short one could be a Gymnocalycium, but I wouldn’t know for sure until it blooms. The coloration seems to be an effect of the sun and probably the soil too. It can handle less than full sun, and may need to be repotted into fresh fast draining cactus soil in the spring.

In the San Francisco area I would recommend watering every 2 to 3 weeks through the summer, less in winter. They are probably hardy down to about 30F.

Peter

Using our newest double-bowl glass for a succulent terrarium?

Crazy!

Your Weekly Whippet this week is…

Jason!!!

Cheryl bought the large Stapelia coming into bloom last weekend, just before the flower opened, and now has sent along a picture of the open flower.

Stinky!

A couple closeups of some lovely North American Chollas.

Cylindropuntia spinosior

Cylindropuntia whipplei

And a bonus South American cholla.

It looks like we’re growing a lot of very spiny Austrocylindropuntia subulatas!

Tillandsia ionantha “Rubra”

I took this picture on Rikki’s back. She’s wearing a black hoodie! A very nice black backdrop.

And here’s some natural outdoor sunshine.

Planter by JFish, Jennifer Fisher Ceramics.

I see we have some vibrant and colorful Mesembs in full and gorgeous colorfully bloomed.

Lapidaria margaretae

Lithops salicola

The plants are barely even visible under those giant and colorful flowers.

I see Botanicality on Etsy has Dinosaurs for sale, with succulents! I wonder if they have Dinosaurs with cactus????

Ferocious….

It’s a giant Stapelia bloom and it’s about to open! The stinky carrion flower might make the Rare Plant Room uninhabitable as soon as tomorrow! Yay!

Haha! Just kidding! It already opened over the weekend and the smell has already started to dissipate by now. Phew! Unfortunately it was purchased right after I took this almost-open photo and never got another picture of it fully open. On the plus side, it didn’t stink up the rare plant room.

The post below shows all the pretty and photogenic Pitcher Plants in their native habitat: In front of a beautiful black background ready for their closeup.

Here we see them growing as quickly as they can before the winter dormancy period arrives. I hope we have enough flies to feed them all.

We have some more new Pitcher Plants in full pitcher just before we get into the winter dormancy period. This is your last best chance to get a good look at the variety of hoods and colors that we get with these readily hybridizing carnivorous plants.

Sarracenia minor

Sarracenia “Mardi Gras” must be from New Orleans. What? It’s not? Then who named this plant?

Sarracenia “Ladies in Waiting” is very frilly.

Pitcher Plants are always so photogenic! I love it.

Mammillaria schiedeana is a pretty little blooming cactus. There are potential subspecies names associated with this species but I think this is a specimen of the species.

They will form fairly robust clusters, though each individual stem is only 2″ diameter x 4″ tall max.

Ferocactus stainesii

These are a generally solitary barrel from Durango, although we have seen some mature specimens forming a small cluster. My copy of Anderson’s The Cactus Family tells me that this plant is more properly called Ferocactus pilosus. Why didn’t anyone tell me?!?!@ On the other hand some have been known to call this one Ferocactus pringlei. So many names!

Now I am embarrassed.

Do you know why they call it a Fire Barrel? I can only guess.

hi — i’m in northwest Wisconsin. wondering if you can identify a vine-type cactus, as far as I remember I got at a garage sale. Attached is a photo. I came home on my lunch hour today to take a photo of the single flower that had bloomed — good thing I did, cuz I just looked at it and the flower is drooped and lifeless. Evidently they only last a day?

I’ve had it about 4-5 years I think. It was root-bound so I divided it a few months ago. Some of the spikes are 3 feet long, long and narrow. There are others that are narrow, then form into a paddle, then get another narrow spike on the end. There are also rows of brown strings that form on the spikes, point toward the light. It’s in an east window.

Hope you can find the time to answer me.

Thanx —

Debbie A.

The cactus is an Epiphyllum, or Orchid Cactus. It is possible it is one of the night-blooming varieties – the blooms only last one night – although most epiphyllums will bloom during the day for 2-3 days. The brown strings are aerial roots – it is looking for tree branches to grab onto.

Peter