Cactus Blog 

Prickly pear fruit, or tunas, are delicious to eat. And by eat I mean use in a margarita.

Here we have some almost ripe fruit from the Opuntia robusta. Shall we pick them soon?

A new cactus lamp has finally made it onto the market, if you live in Europe. I don’t know of any US distributors but that’s probably only because I haven’t checked for any.

Cactus Table lamp
Brand: LZF

Designer Miguel Herranz
Cactus is a likeable and elegant table lamp made of wood veneer strips. Switched off it creates an interesting volume, and switched on it increases its beauty defining interesting volume, and switchd on it increases its beauty defining interesting patterns by the superposition of the different wood strips.

And it costs 271.83 € so you know it must be most excellent, and not just “likeable and elegant” which it certainly is also of course. I would totally agree with that marketing assessment. However the rest of the description looks like it went through a bad translator. “Increases its beauty defining interesting volume” is not a meaningful phrase in the English language. Maybe it was translated from an original Swedish, but through a midpoint of Italian and then to the French before finally landing on English.

Here let me show you how that works, but starting with English and then through Swedish etc and back to English: “The fox and the dog came to London to learn a new language” through the multi-language translator stuff comes back out into English as, “Fox and the dog came to London to learn a new language”. Huh! They’ve improved the translator programming. How about that.

Last week I posted a picture of a cactus skirt by a company called Nasty Girl, although they were out of the skirt. Now this week we see that a company called koshka has a cactus dress for sale and its in stock! and it turns out that it is the exact same fabric!

Nice use of fabric. I wonder who the fabric designer is, and where we can buy the fabric, and if we bought the fabric what we could do with it – would you buy a cactus print muffler from us? a cactus print finger warmer? a cactus print fabric square? a cactus print laptop bag?

(Thanks to Angie for the link)

Succulent terrariums are so hot they’ve made the very fashionable pages of GQ. Tillandsias too. The one on the upper left is by Roost and the one in the lower right is by Chive, and we carry both of them, right now!

Today we see our feared and ferocious Dimetrodon is in the Crassula garden.

With Crassula muscosa.

Can you help ID this plant growing 50 miles north of Santa Cruz. Any ideas on a species?

Dustin

Dustin –

It’s a Dudleya. 50 miles north of Santa Cruz is the Half Moon Bay area, so it is probably Dudleya farinosa, but possibly Dudleya cymosa.

Peter

from the tumblr feeds:

Joseph’s this is 4 my blog:

Rachel came by the nursery the other day and picked up this Echeveria runyonii ‘Topsy Turvy’ then I guess went home and made this illustration. Beautiful! Be sure to click through and check out more of her awesome work

rachelkantor:

Between moving, parents visiting, PA pals sleeping in my kitchen, quitting my job, getting some hands on organic culinary training and roommates moving from PA to our new awesome home in Oakland I’ve gotten quite behind.

warm up drawing to get back in the swing. Succulent Joseph.

Hi, I’m a big fan of your blog and i was hoping that you might be able to identify this agave? I just picked it up at lowes and it was labeled as an aloe.  Fingers crossed that it’s hardy.

Thanks
Paul from VA

Paul,

You have an Agave, probably Agave potatorum. Also see here for lots more pictures.

They are hardy to about 25F (Zone 9b), so probably not hardy outside in VA.

Peter

Rikki has been on a tear recently.

A terrarium in a glass milk carton with white sand and a polar bear?

These are amazing.

Here’s a closeup of just the potted cactus cupcakes part of the party.

Here’s the link to the whole party and a whole lot of photos.

I wonder if the terra cotta pots are edible?

Lila B Designs made terrariums for the Google campus.

I think they got the glass and plants and rocks and everything else from us. We had 3 people come in at 5pm a couple weeks ago and they were putting together terrariums for google, and that all looks like product we carry, so there is a good chance that we helped pick all these out.

I put the odds at 70-30.

They’re nice – even if they got their glass and succulents and other stuff from someone other than us. But I think they got it from us. So that’s even better.

70-30.

This is a long ways away so there’s plenty of time to schedule your trip to Long Beach just for this event.

Holiday Succulent Centerpiece Workshop at Rancho Los Cerritos
Saturday, Nov 17 2:00p to 4:00p at Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site, Long Beach, CA

Rancho Los Cerritos announces a holiday workshop for adults to create festive succulent centerpieces that will accentuate the home well into the New Year! The event is scheduled for Saturday, November 17, 2-4 p.m. The cost is $28 for the general public and $25 for members. All supplies and materials will be included. read more

I wonder if anyone reading this will actually put this on their calendar? Or maybe even attend.

Apparently nobbly guitar picks are called “cactus picks” and you can buy them pre-nobbly-ed in 3 packs.

You never know where the word “cactus” is going to take you on the interwebs.

It’s our new ceramic birds, now available for purchase at Cactus Jungle, (very reasonably priced!) in thyme.

Thymus “Argenteus”

I took the photo with Instagram. You can find me on instagram as bobdavisart on your smartphone app. That’s my other name! Why you may ask do I have another name? It’s my nom d’artiste. Did you also know we have twitter and pinterest too? Those links you can click on your browser or on your smartphone – they work! A monthly cactus email can come directly to your email. And finally we have facebook – always with the facebook. We’re so plugged in that I spend 12 hours of every day just checking the feeds. That’s a lot of thyme.

Puns!

It’s the first rain of the season – in fact the first real rain in about 7 months – and you know what that means.

No need to water the plants today! Yay!

Except the indoor and houseplants. Those still need to be watered. But that’s not a lot of plants. A lot fewer than all the plants that are outside getting watered by the rains. Yay!

Our newest garden toy at Cactus Jungle is a dinosaur for the garden. For your garden.

Dimetrodon in the garden with Sedums.

Here’s what they really look like.

Fossil skeleton of Dimetrodon grandis, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC.

Digital photo by User:Postdlf, taken 2/20/05.

Pretty nice replica!

Hey, wait a sec’, that’s today!

I hope you don’t pick up any acacias and bring them into Berkeley since I’m allergic, and the one on the flyer is coming into bloom.

Leave them behind in Oakland, please.

(via I Can Stop Tomorrow)

Why hasn’t anyone told the Echinopsis pachanoi that it’s late October?

…and then cut into the shape of a skirt. It’s Cactus Maxi Skirt by Nasty Girl.

Now sold out, so you’re too late. But here’s a closeup of the pattern. You can export this and then make a wallpaper pattern out of it if you like. Not that I’m giving you permission, since I don’t own the rights to this, but if I did I would.

It’s warm, but still they’re hiding under blankets for the morning.

Benjamin

Jason

I’m sick today, but I thought you might like this picture of a late blooming Ferocactus emoryi. I took the picture yesterday before I went home sick. Have I made myself sound sufficiently pathetic? Yay!

These aren’t succulent mixed pots… yet. These are handmade artist pots, by local artist Carey Cherney. These have proved very popular this year, and Carey just brought by a whole new crop. And Rikki already has her eye on about half of them for mixed succulent pots….

Closeups!

Don’t forget to click the photos for enbiggenments.

The blue is a new color from Carey. It’s a good blue color.

And I suppose it all goes without saying, except when it doesn’t, that these are all now available at the nursery, i.e. Cactus Jungle, now.

These very small flowers with the deep colors have always been difficult for me to capture in a digital image. But I think this one came out pretty good – gives a good and accurate perception of the flowers.

These plants are also pretty easy to grow – outside in shade or inside as a deeply colored foliage plant with occasional lavender flowers.

Plectranthus “Mona Lavender”

Native to South Africa
Evergreen Perennial

Sun: Full Sun to Light Shade
Water: Regular
Size: 2ft. tall

Quick growing perennial shrub forms a well rounded, dense bush. Dark green glossy leaves with intensely lavender bloom sprays winter and spring. Hardy to 28° F.

Malacothamnus fasciculatus “Casitas”

Bay Area CA Native
Evergreen Shrub

Sun: Full Sun at coast to Part Shade inland
Water: Low once established
Size: Bushy, erect stems 4 to 10 feet

The butterflies flock to the small pink flowers that cover the plant throughout the summer. Clay-soils tolerant. Good for hedges and along fences. Hardy to 25F.

Apparently a NY nail polish manufacturer named one of their yellow nail polishes after a succulent or a cactus or something.

This is the color. They called it Baby Toes Cactus, which I suppose refers to Fenestraria, i.e. Baby Toes, although it’s not a cactus.

Here’s the full bottle:

And just so you know, this fabulous cactus or succulent or mesemb color has been discontinued.

Noooo!!!!!!

In case you were wondering, this is the real color of a Fenestraria aurantiaca flower, i.e. Baby Toes Yellow.

And the actual flower:

Not me for, no, god forbid. But if you were in Bakersfield yesterday maybe you caught the cactus and succulent show at the Golden State Mall? In the past it had been held at the East Hills Mall, but this year they moved it, so I hope you didn’t go to the wrong mall yesterday and miss out.

That wasn’t you? Oh, nevermind then.

Anything else about Bakersfield we should know? Well there is a Bakersfield Cactus, aka Opuntia basilaris var. treleasei, but that’s not actually from Bakersfield.

Hahaha! Yes it is from Bakersfield! Nice! It’s the Kern County native Beavertail cactus, so you know it’s good, if a bit endangered by development.

Ranunculus californicus is only the cutest little rangy dicot perennial around. Here’s a link to a picture in habitat from a local State Park, near Monterey.

Around here we get spring and fall flowers.

A nice late-blooming Cleistocactus straussii.