Cactus Blog 

Echinocereus grandiflora “Sunrise Yellow”

“Childhood” filter by Camera fx.

It’s an agave coming into bloom. Agave funkiana. It’s still on the floor at the nursery, but I took the price tag off and moved it out front for display. The bloom is growing fast. Soon it will finish its cycle and die. Oh how we will miss you, funkiana, my friend.

Marigold “Bolaro”

Jatropha berlandieri

What can I tell you about this lovely plant? It’s from the Mexico/Texas border area. It goes completely dormant in winter with no green at all, just the caudex. It grows lots of short green vines with nicely lobed leaves and proliferates with red and yellow flowers for most of the year.

I can tell you that we keep it inside in a sunny location, but it doesn’t need all day sun.

I can tell you that it has oily seeds that pop out of the seed pod three at a time.

That’s enough for today.

Aloe polyphylla

It’s in! The latest in scented variegated geraniums! What is it, you ask? Let me tell you.

Pelargonium “Mrs Pollack” or possibly “Mrs Pollock” depending on how you choose to spell it. I choose the first one.

Echeveria “Fireball” is one of the only 2 of the big Echeveria hybrids we’ve been growing consistently for a few years, but this is the first time we’ve had a full crop of them and not just a few random plants. I guess this means Brian and Hap did a good job of planning the parent stock and tending them and propagating them too.

Yay! for them.

This is also one of the few hybrids have the typically get a decent sized stalk without tipping over.

We’re now growing more large Echeveria hybrids that should be coming out all year long. We’ve invested heavily in Echeveria hybrid futures on the Succulent Futures Market, which operates out of Sudbury, Connecticut.

Cell phone photos get put through cell phone filters. It’s the way of the world now. Obama stands among succulents like Pachyveria and Sedum. Plus a horned lizard as it so happens. That’s also the way of the world.

I rescued this plant from the trash; but, I don’t know anything about it. Can you help ? I assumed from the base it was an arid climate plant.

Thanks
Joan

Nicely weeded. Thanks, Genn!

A customer brought us some Saguaro seedlings yesterday. We should see some nice big cacti from these in another 20 years or so. I kid! We should have small plants from these ready next year. Grow!

These were grown in our own custom soil mix – Ultra Soil!

These are a year older and grown in soil from Tucson.

You can really tell the difference even in the photos.

Obama hanging out in a succulent garden with Haworthia, Echeverias, and some judicious use of Sedum.

OK so you missed the whippet photo yesterday. Kaiju didn’t satisfy like a whippet will. So here, have an Instagram whippet photo for a Saturday in the park. You are hanging out at the park today aren’t you? I am. Well, no maybe not.

Yay! Whippets!

Solanum “Spring Frost”

I feel like I featured this one on the blog recently. Should I go ahead and do a search? Obviously not since I’ve already gotten this far in the post and finding out that I did already post this plant recently would only piss me off.

Anyway its a low growing California native perennial that will bloom for the entire spring season and again occasionally in the summer if you water it.

Poisonous of course, being a Solanum, i.e. in the Nightshade family, so enjoy the flowers but don’t eat the leaves. I don’t know about any berries, but in general stay away from all parts of Nightshades except for tomatoes and other edible Nightshade family fruits.

Myrtillocactus geometrizans crest

It’s been a long cold winter for the Pitcher Plants, but they’re finally ready to come out for spring.

Sarracenia flava

These are spectacular, even if they don’t have a lot of pitchers – big and blooming too. Very distinctive. Great form! I give them a 9.6.

Sarracenia purpurea, not sure the subspecies, but they are full and very veiny. A bit more common than the flavas, but not as subtle. 8.7 is all they can garner from my scoring machine. Maybe I should revisit the point system and the computer algorithm.

Remember those photos of Benjamin in the cone of shame earlier this year and the photos of Jason in the cone of shame last year? Now we have a new T – Shirt from Gamago and it’s Kaiju in the Cone of Shame.

It’s already our best selling T – Shirt at the store ever!

Did you know? NPR knows.

Well, not really cactus per se, but red dye which comes from cochineal insects which are grown on and feed on cactus. It’s true! Cactus in the guts of insects get squished out into a red dye that is used in various sundry Starbucks products.

The tiny white insects that feed on cactus turn into red cochineal when crushed. Starbucks uses the dye in some of its products.

Some Starbucks patrons have been distressed to learn that the chain’s Strawberry and Creme Frappuccino owes its pink coloring to crushed insects.

And now we have the start of our Obama in the Garden series of photos featuring our new Barack Obama toy.

First up we have a photo that Keith took of Godzilla eating Obama.

Classic! Maybe tomorrow the Obama in the Garden series will feature some actual plants and not just silly things we carry at the nursery.

We delivered some new pots to one of our regular customers and while there I took photos of some of their cactus pots we set up for them a few years ago.

I see the plants have grown in nicely. Maybe a bit TOO nicely, if you know what I mean.

No, you don’t know what I mean? Oh. I mean it’s overgrown – that it’s time to start pulling a few plants out and propagating some of them and replanting them with more space to grow again over the next few years.

And this is a stunning specimen Opuntia saxitilis in the almost-sunset light. It was a mere baby when it was planted. Now look how big its grown.

Back to plants! Ian took this photo of a bamboo install this morning.

Hap took Mike and Ian and it looks like they got very busy. Whew! Glad that wasn’t me. I know they were glad it wasn’t raining as scheduled.

I wonder what program on his phone Ian used to get that photo. Shall we guess?

So we went ahead and ordered the Barack Obama Toys. We have a lot of toys from this company for terrarium ornaments because everyone loves to put little ornaments into their terrariums.

And now you can also decorate your terrarium with the President.

Or play with him all by yourself in your quiet and contemplative living room or with other friends in their home, since he’s portable.

Or I suppose some of you would put him on a shelf.

In case anyone was wondering why we never carried any Bush Presidential toys while bowing to the communist socialist fascist liberal pressure to carry Obama Presidential toys, it’s because we’re liberals. You know we live in Berkeley, right? BERKELEY for crying out loud. Anyone here who doesn’t like Obama is because he’s too conservative.

Went to the de Young on my day off. I can recommend you go for the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit, but stay for the murals.

Gottardo F.P. Piazzoni The Land (1932)

Teotihuacán

Echinocereus pectinatus v. rubispinus

We took another plant off the windowsill to the nursery to take lots of cuttings and had to replace it. I chose this little cactus.

This window overlooks the backyard that yesterday I cropped out of the seedling picture I posted. You also can’t see the backyard mess here either. I’m tricky that way.

The photo was too backlit to be useful so I used an Instagram for Android filter or two to make it more mysterious.

It looks like the radish seeds have sprouted cotyledons already. That didn’t take long.

Oh, five days.

Since this is a picture of my own backyard vegetable garden I’ve obscured any potential personal details, like showing you the mess back there. No showing the mess!

I see the succulent planters are growing nicely at the mall in Emeryville. And what do we have here?

Why it’s an Agave beginning the bloom cycle. Too bad, very sad. Probably Agave vilmoriana, or hybrid thereof.

Also in bloom in back are all the great looking Euphorbia characias.

And the photo does raise the question, why pay more for 4g. The answer of course is selection. So there.

Borrowed from Auntie Rachel’s facebook page, it’s an Easter in Arizona Echinocereus fendleri in bloom.

Stunning flowers.

We now carry lightweight concrete pots from Uban FarmGirls in San Francisco and I took one right away and made me a succulent mixed pot with it.

And here they were without plants before I got my hands on one.

Nice pots.