Opuntia subulata (Austrocylidropuntia subulata) – a tree cholla from the Andes, also known as Eve’s Needles, grows over 25 ft. tall in the Bay Area, although I hear it tops out at 12 ft. in the Andes.
This here is a piece of fruit rooted into the soil and newly branched. They generally don’t go to seed and instead the sterile fruit drop and roll and root. A new tree ensues.
Never water. We get enough rain here that they are the fastest growing cactus we carry. If you also water they’ll grow too fast, won’t form a strong woody core, and will flop over. What with those very long spines (hence the common name) a falling branch doesn’t seem like a good thing.
These large hedgehog cacti that get dozens, even hundreds of blooms, also get pollinated by our bees. The bees love them. And so we get fruit. And seeds.
If you let a hybrid get hybridized with other hybrids and go to seed, well then you don’t know what you’re going to get, now do you? That’s how I like it. That’s why we don’t attach cultivar names to our grandifloras, or a lot of our other hybridized cacti – hybridizing is so simply a natural process that the results really are just individuals. They vary! what a shock. It’s all good.
You’d think from the name this plant was from Arizona, but no, it is from Bolivia, where the hummingbirds love the blooms and the small fruit then burst with seeds that I’m sure some other bird must feast on too.
Tall slender columns covered in golden spines. Vast quantities of red blooms. Fast growing, make great focal specimens in any garden, in case you were looking for a focal specimen for your garden, that is, because have we got a deal for you.
It’s the cactus from yesterday’s video in full bloom, up close.
Ferocactus hamatacanthus
Update: In comments below, Aiyana asked if I use black backdrops, which I do. However, for this photo, there was no backdrop since I cropped it pretty severely. However, the cactus underneath the blooms was in deep shadow. If you look closely, you can sort of see it. Here’s a closeup of the lower right corner where I’ve used photoshop to lighten the shadow area so you can see the cactus beneath:
Antirheumatic: The stem is cut, soaked for a day and the next day used to wash the area of pain with this mucilage water.
Vetrinarial: For getting rid of pig parasites, the cactus stem is peeled, smashed and let to soak in water overnight. It is then mixed with food given to the animal.
Adherent in paints: The peeled stems are beaten and left to stand in water, filtrate is added to minerals such as lime or gypsum. The result is a kind of gum for paint.
Wood: The dried stalks are very resistant to moths. The dried stalks are used to make scales and in the construction of houses.
Good to know. And still there’s more, on the ethnobotanical qualities of the plant:
I feel like outsourcing my blogging today. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about this spectacular ethnobotanical cactus:
A fast-growing columnar cactus native to the western slope of the Andes in Peru, between about 2000-3000 meters above sea level.
The plant is bluish-green in colour, with frosted stems, and 6-8 broadly rounded ribs; it has large, white flowers. It can grow up to 7 meters tall, with stems up to 20 cm in diameter; it is fully erect to begin with, but later possibly arching over, or even becoming prostrate. Groups of 6-8 honey-coloured to brown rigid spines, up to 4 cm in length, with most about 1 cm, are located at the nodes, which are evenly spaced along the ribs, up to approximately 2.5 cm apart.
A short-spined variant which is nearly identical in appearance to its relative, Echinopsis pachanoi (San Pedro cactus), is known. It is therefore possible that many misidentified plants are being sold (both as Peruvian Torch and as San Pedro), but since local variations as well as hybrids do exist (both cultivated and natural), this will obviously make proper identification difficult.
I previously blogged this plant in bloom and that bloom was a lot less red than this one, but taken at an angle that really showed the “torch” character of the flower.
Here we get to see the depth of the red.
Echinopsis huascha
I like to use this plant when in bloom as an example at the nursery for natural variations of a single species vs. labeling every cultivar with a “name”. So I’m sure I could take the more orange one, and cultivate it for the orange blooms since they pup readily, propagate a whole messload of clones, and give it a name like, Echinopsis huascha “Fairy Tale Princess”. But I prefer to see them all as individuals, even when cloned, and to respect the natural variations without resorting to separating them into new cultivars.
I suppose this means I see nature more as a continuity than as a series of discrete species. Botanists will be outraged! Does that make me bad?
I posted this cactus in bud earlier in the week, and now here’s the bloom wide open.
Ferocactus pottsi
These don’t seem to be opening fully this year. But they’re kinda nice like this too. If they’re pollinated they get little yellow fruit, and with the dead bloom still stuck on top look like little pineapples.
And it is purple-throated! Just like the books said it would be! Can you tell how excited I am? I wonder if we can get a closer look deep into that purple throat….
It’s a shrubby caudex that will grow to 10 ft. tall. It will have golden trumpet flowers with a spectacular purple throat, I assure you. Stayed tuned for more photos as this bud opens, petals wide open.
We grow these indoors here. Maybe you can have them outdoors where you are. Where are you? These Uncarinas look to me like they’re from the Arabian peninsula. Maybe I’ll go check that out for you. Hold on while I google it.
Nope! They’re from Madagascar, like every other fantastical plant on the planet.
These barrels are from Mexico and get around 16″ across, plus a whole lot taller eventually. We’re not really sure what species this is, but we’ve done our best looking through all our sources to identify it as F. pottsi. We waited for the blooms, which are yellow thus ruling out F. diguetii, to be sure.
I like this picture of the buds better than the picture of the yellow blooms I have. Kind of looks Eastern Orthodox.
I may share the bloom photo too; who can tell for sure what I’m thinking.
It’s late in the day, and this flower is trying to open before evening, but it won’t make it. Tomorrow….
So for now it has taken on this very weird floppy partially open look.
Echinopsis pachanoi, San Pedro Cactus
From Peru, so they tell me. This plant is very popular with the college students here in Berkeley, not that I would know why. We recommend you plant it in your back yard, where the college students won’t find it.
Maybe tomorrow if the bloom is fully open I’ll take another picture. Would you like that?
Here we have a lovely spotted flower coming out of some standard-issue green stems with little spiny pointy things.
Huernia guttata reticulata
Shall we look closer?
Click the closeup for a bigger closeup.
Now this little gem is an easy to grow, easy to bloom plant from South Africa, Western Cape, that rewards with many thick green 3″ stems. They form a dense mat that can produce many of these flowers with variable sized spottings. Some have big red spoltchy spots, while others have tiny little fine spots. All have that very interesting structure inside, protected by some little bloom spines! They are a carrion flower, and so attract beetles and such. It’s a ground hugging bloom which is how I know it’s for beetles and not flies.
We keep them indoors where the beetles don’t find them, because that’s just the way we are.
Pilosocereus leucocephalus, also known as the Woolly Torch
Variable columnar cactus from all over South America. Gets the woolly, or hairy, “cephalum” near where it’s going to bloom. It’s an indication of sexual maturity in the plant. However, unlike true cephalum which are thickly hairy at the top or on one side only, this cactus will get a full column of hair up and down, with just a little extra dollop of hairiness near the bloom spots. It’s special. Also faster growing than the Oreocereuses. Will get over 20 ft. tall.
This is not a plant we are selling at the nursery. This picture is from my front yard garden. I had to bring the black backdrop home from the store to take this photo. But I forgot, so I found a piece of gray construction paper and used that as a backdrop and then made it black in photoshop. You’d never have known if I hadn’t told you.
Yesterday I posted a picture of this plant in bud, now the bud has opened and the bloom is yellow, just like I promised.
Parodia ottonis
You get a real feel for how big the flower is compared to the body of the cactus. I tend to focus a lot on the blooms this time of year. (Well, through the spring and summer months…) They’re so pretty. But I’ve been told context is important too, so here’s some context for you.
Cereus c.v. monstrose – Each is a clone of a virus-ridden parent. Many variable parents give us many variable monstroses.
In case that wasn’t entirely clear, what’s going on is a perfectly normal smooth vertical cactus like the Cereus peruvianus from Peru catches a virus and the resultant form is known as a “monstrose.” Sometimes, you get a crested plant, but in this instance, you get this monstrous form of all these bumpies up and down the trunk. Good stuff.
Now, if you let it go to seed, generally the virus will not be transmitted to the babies, and the plant will revert to its original form (which it can do anyway). So you propagate these exclusively by cuttings. This means that any individual variations in the monstrosenesses will be carried identically by the cloned babies. And any variations between plants means they came from different virused parents.
Many cacti and succulents grow… with an apical meristem, the dominant bud at the very top that contributes to its pyramidal form… This gives them their symmetrical shapes. Occasionally something happens to that meristem and it mutates. One growth point turns into many, forcing the top of the plant to fans out into a series of mini-points. The result is that the top of a pointed cactus produces a crest that can look very much like a rooster comb.
In other cases, the mutation may occur throughout the plant, not just at the top. Growth points originate all over the stem or branches causing very irregular growth. The result is a monstrosity, and while the plant remains the same species, it may bear very little resemblance to its kin.
Oddly enough an occasional crest, or monstrose, branch will appear on a normal plant. Sometimes a monstrose plant will revert to normal growth. It’s a genetic crap-shoot and Mother Nature holds the dice.
This little bud will open into a large and pretty yellow flower. This little plant will have about 6 flowers this year. Parodias are very popular with the local bee population. Not as popular as the Echinocereuses of course, but popular enough that they have their own myspace page.
Some say they will get to 6″ diameter, while others claim they will slowly pup. I do not support such reckless claims until I have seen them myself. I have only ever seen this particular parodia at about 3″ across. However, they are not all solitary, but some have already begun to pup. Therefore I come to the conclusion that I can believe what the books tell me or I can believe my lying eyes.
Speaking of which, I have started wearing reading glasses this year. I still have good distant vision, still being the first one to see street signs coming up, but now I can’t read a friggin’ menu without my costco reading glasses.
So I will leave off with this: Michael Dukakis is a childhood friend of my mother’s. Don’t you just love it! Random personal details! And sometimes they’re even true! Like this one! It makes me laugh.
I’m not feeling like writing anything about these waxy vining dangling succulents in the asclepiad family. instead I would like to write about the Red Sox. But I won’t.
Some of my headlines are getting shorter. Not really more to the point, I don’t think.
Pereskia grandifolia
A primitive cactus. And by that, I mean it’s not even a succulent. It has true cactus spines and all, but it also has true leaves. And it sure is shrubby, and pink-beflowered.
I used to live in Alaska. For 4 years. One summer I drove around the state doing ADA surveys for government buildings. I flew into the villages that weren’t on the road system.
