While still avoiding the Arizona newspapers, I came upon this strange fiction in a Colorado newspaper. It seems there are cactus aliens amongst us.
“Ooh, it is warm here,” said Glauke, who had assumed the aspect of the living thing closest to his own physiology — a saguaro cactus, albeit composed mostly of sand to reflect his status as a silicon-based life-form.
Thule, an ethereal being, felt comfortable in the desert. Rather than congeal into a concrete manifestation, he was content to shimmer as a mirage.
The unseasonable cold snap has caused all sorts of cactus blooms to have trouble opening. It’s sunny so they’re trying. A little heat would go a long way.
Keith thinks I should have tips for you, and all I can think of is to bring them inside in a sunny window.
Question: How can I keep my sedum from flopping over? I’ve seen it in other peoples’ gardens and it always seems much sturdier and stockier.
— S.C., via e-mail
Answer: Sedum are succulents, which means they are good at holding water, so they are able to tolerate hot, dry conditions. That’s why the creeping versions especially are standard rock garden denizens. Like most plants that do well in full sun, they might get a little stretchy and loose if grown in too much shade.
We’re posting a cactus calendar of events everywhere in the country for you. I hope one of these works for you.
Fresno, California
Fresno State is hosting a water-wise plant exchange on Saturday, May 8 from 8:00 a.m. to noon at the Fresno State Horticulture Greenhouses, 3150 E. Barstow Ave., just east of Chestnut Avenue in Fresno.
The Cactus Show and Sale takes place this weekend at Sierra Vista Mall, May 15-16.
Next up…
Corvallis, OR
The 23rd annual Spring Garden Festival hosted by the Madison Avenue Task Force included clinics and workshops by the Benton County Master Gardeners, musical performances and numerous vendors selling plants and garden art. Plant enthusiasts could find… wreaths of succulents…
Oops, sounds like we missed that one.
I guess that’s enough calendering for one day. Stay tuned for more, later, maybe.
Pediocactus simpsonii, Mountain Ball Cactus, Photo by Stephen Jones
We once saw more than 60 blooming in one spot near the Meyers Homestead Trail at Walker Ranch Open Space. The blossoms close on cloudy days, so go out in the middle of a sunny day to find them.
The globular cactus plants are especially abundant on dry, gravelly ridges where they receive the most intense light, but they also thrive on rocky soils in foothills canyons and have even been found on mountain passes.
Success With Succulents. Master Gardener Laura Balaoro covers the basics of planting and caring for succulents. 10 a.m.-noon May 1. Metropolitan Adult Education Program’s Erikson Adult Center, 4849 Pearl Ave., San Jose. Free. 408-723-6450, www.metroed.net.
Earlier today I blogged an article from India about using cactus mucilage as a flocculent to purify water, and commented that without further scientific confirmation, I was withholding judgment.
I see here that New Scientist has a preliminary article up about the flocculent properties of the cactus mucilage.
FORGET expensive machinery, the best way to purify water could be hiding in a cactus….
Householders in the developing world could boil a slice of cactus to release the mucilage and add it to water in need of purification, says (Norma Alcantar at the University of South Florida in Tampa), “The cactus’s prevalence, affordability and cultural acceptance make it an attractive natural material for water purification technologies.”
But Colin Horwitz of GreenOx Catalysts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says many issues remain, including how much land and water is needed to grow cacti for widespread water purification, and how households will know all the bacteria have been removed.
We’re traveling around the world collecting cactus stories that do not come from the Arizona newspapers, and here’s one from New York.
(T)here is one supporter of the women’s lacrosse team that has not missed a game in four years. He sits silently, patiently observing his favorite team in action, until the end of the game when it is then decided which member of the team he gets to hang out with for a whole week….
This unnamed Bombers’ supporter is a cactus. He’s a stuffed cactus, at that, and is awarded to a different player after each game the Blue and Gold play.
Yay! Who needs to read about wild cactus when we can read about stuffed cactus in upstate New York. Too bad there aren’t any pictures. let me google around for a bit and see what I can come up with.
Since I’m no longer blogging stories from Arizona newspapers, I have to find farther flung stories about cactus. This one comes from India.
The prickly cactus… can actually be used as a water purifier, says a new study.
Opuntia ficus-indica’s… mucilage… acted as a flocculant. The agent had caused all the sediments to join together and settle at the bottom of the water…. (and) made the water 98% bacteria free.
Very interesting. Especially that word, “flocculant.” Nice!
I haven’t gone to the trouble of verifying that story, so I wouldn’t believe a word in it without further scientific confirmation, but it’s a happy fun cactus story!
By Debra Prinzing
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) You may have heard of living walls, but how about a living box? The exterior walls of the new wing of the Bricault family’s Venice home are clad in sedums and other succulents, which soften the contemporary architecture so it looks like a plush, verdant floating cube.
Just below Falcon Dam is one of the most extraordinary sites in the Rio Grande Valley….
Biologists refer to this area as the Chihuahuan Thorn Forest, and it is also know as the Falcon Woodlands….
One of the rarest is the spindly Wilcox cactus that produces showy pink blooms.
This delicate cactus grows several feet tall and entangles with other thorny shrubs for support of its long delicate stems.
It was tough to figure out what this cactus is, what with the poor photo quality taken straight from video, and the errors that I recently made mistaking an echinocereus for an opuntia, plus a recently discovered ongoing feud we’ve apparently had for the last 2 years with a peniocereus grower, has led me to be gun-shy.
Hah! Hardly. I figured this was probably a peniocereus. “Wilcox Cactus” doesn’t track with anything, but there used to be a genus called wilcoxia. Now that’s a ridiculous name for a cactus, so it’s a good thing they got rid of it, once and for all. And look here, most of the former wilcoxias have been moved to peniocereus! Bingo!
And yet, it’s not. There are a number of subtle clues that our peniocereus nemesis could probably share with us, I’m sure, but Anderson’s “The Cactus Family” is pretty convincing that this is Echinocereus poselgeri. Presto, signore.
Here’s a Chihuahuan Desert cactus for you instead.
Echinocereus triglochidiatus var. gurneyi is a tightly clumping hedgehog cactus. This high altitude subspecies grows in the rocky outcrops of the southern New Mexico highlands.
Even with the development crash in Nevada, the edges of Las Vegas are still growing. This time into protected cactus territory.
A state-protected cactus may become a thorny snag for a developer with plans to build a subdivision near Red Rock Canyon….
But growing on the hillside land is the Blue Diamond cholla, a stubby, big-needled cactus that is among 24 plants the state considers “critically endangered.”…
Public opposition to Rhodes’ plan is growing among those who want to protect the cactus.
Well now that is a first – a group of Nevadans trying to slow development encroaching on the desert!
Blue Diamond Cholla is Cylindropuntia multigeniculata and the picture is from Bird and Hike, plus they have a dozen more photos including bright yellow flower pictures of the Blue Diamond. Nice!
PHOTOS BY JEFFRY SCOTT / ARIZONA DAILY STAR Visitors talked with a master gardener in the cactus demonstration garden Saturday during the Master Gardener Home Garden Tour.
What they forgot to tell them is that cactus make good protection from robberies. For instance, if you have a cactus underneath your window, it makes it harder for the thief to get in, and if he has gotten in, it makes it harder for them to get away when they bolt out the window to make their escape and land in a patch of cactus.
With their lavish collection of succulents, cacti, vines, and hanging plants are Wilton Garden Club members, from left, Patty Angione, Mya Smith and JoAnn Overton. All the plants were grown in the club’s greenhouse for its annual plant sale May 7-8.
The Wilton Garden Club’s greenhouse at Comstock is now in “high season,” brimming over with aloes, aeoniums, echeverias, agaves, kalanchoes, sedums, haworthii, and dozens of other succulents, cacti, vines, and ferns, all cultivated by garden club volunteers to be ready for this year’s 2010 Plants’ Sale on the Wilton Village Green, Friday, May 7, from 4 to 7, and Saturday, May 8, from 9 to noon.
I wonder where Wilton is; what state we’re talking about here?
To the Google!
Connecticut, our favorite Nutmeg State. And yes, those people refer to themselves as “Nutmeggers.” I don’t make up the news, I just report it.
Endlessly fascinating in their range of color and form, cacti and other succulents satisfy beginning gardeners with their easy-going nature and inspire seasoned gardeners to grow them into sculptural works of art. Learn the basics as well as the finer points that will enable you to produce your own masterpieces with author, lecturer and plantsman extraordinaire Ray Rogers, Monday, April 19, 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Haggerty Education Center, The Frelinghuysen Arboretum, 53 East Hanover Ave., Morristown. Cost: $20. To learn about other events at The Frelinghuysen Arboretum, visit www.arboretumfriends.org.
The Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society will hold its 27th Show and Sale at Naugatuck Valley Community College this weekend. The show will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. This is one of the largest shows of its kind in the Northeast, drawing close to a thousand attendees. Signs will direct visitors from Exit 18 off I-84 through to the free parking under the college building. Admission is free. www.ctcactusclub.com.
Cactus and Succulent Society of San Jose has its annual sale of rare and unusual cactuses and succulents this weekend at Buscher Middle School, 1111 Bellomy St., Santa Clara. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. www.csssj.org
Fort Worth: The Fort Worth Botanic Garden’s spring sale features native and adapted plants that thrive in North Texas…. Specialty plant societies also will sell begonias, cacti, succulents, roses and tropicals. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. 3220 Botanic Garden Blvd., Fort Worth. 817-871-7686; www.fwbg.org.
Our Clusia orthoneura parent plants are finally branching! This is good news because it means we may finally be able to get some more plants cultivated and out at the nursery.
Garden Porn posted a nice photographic review of the SF Garden Show that we missed while in Boston, via Christine at Idora Design who is posting photos of the show all week.
And the San Diego Union-Tribune takes you into the heart of the wildflowers.
The heavy rainfall this winter has given us an outstanding wildflower bloom in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park…
Nothing is as exciting to me as the bright fuchsia blooms of the beavertail, and they’re sticking out all over now. Besides the barrel cactus, you’ll also see the blooms on the fishhook cactus, as well as the cholla.
Among the amazing discoveries in a spring desert wildflower season are the tiny blooms that cover the sandy desert floor. You have to look closely for these little wonders. See if you can spot the yellow and pink sand verbena, the bright yellow gold poppies, and the tiny white rock daisies.
I must say I haven’t appreciated the State as much as I should. I went looking for wildflower photos and the private enterprises, like the local newspapers in San Diego, failed me. But the State came through. Good stuff.
DesertUSA also has good wildflower updates, right up to the minute.
Water When Dry is also a good place to find out about what’s blooming in the cultivated deserts of Arizona. Todays blooms include Mammillaria and Baileya.
This is a great idea – taking over a little piece of urban blight and turning it into a farm. And it’s going to grow food that they will then give away free. Hence the name, Free Farm.
The 1/3-acre lot, known unofficially as the Free Farm at the Corner of Gough and Eddy Streets, will soon provide free food to anyone who wants it. It’s being built and cultivated by a group of people who decided the unused parcel, on a particularly busy Western Addition intersection, was a great place for a peach tree to grow.
Fargesia robusta is our newest bamboo introduction. We don’t add new bamboos very often – they have to meet our strict standards for being locally climate appropriate and drought tolerant. So here we go!
This very green clumping bamboo is a mid height 12 to 15 ft. tall, very full and leafy for screening in the ground or in containers and is good in full sun, moderate shade, below 0°F and even above 95° over across the hills into Walnut Creek and such places. Truly it’s the perfect privacy screen for all occasions. I wonder why it took us so long to carry it?
For the 10th year, Buck and Yvonne Hemenway will open their now-extreme drought-tolerant gardens in Indian Hills free to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 27 and 28….
“This is why we do the open house every year, to educate the public,” said Buck Hemenway.
The succulent trend has gone from a slow-burning fire to smokin’ hot! From container pots on porches to green rooftops, vertical garden walls and wire topiaries to outdoor carpets of succulents, these water-wise plants are sure to be the gardener’s must have plants of the season. They thrive even in the most difficult soil conditions and are very forgiving to the weekend gardener who might not have time to water and fertilize regularly. Succulents, which include aloes and cacti… will make great potted and seasonal transplants in the sunny areas of our gardens.
