It’s been a week filled with California Native blooms, and now it’s finally back to the cactus blooms. You know you were waiting for them. Now they’re back.

Echinopsis marsoneri

These are getting ready for another round of blooms in 2 to 3 weeks, but they’re pretty much finished up with this round. So no whining when you come to the nursery and they’re not in bloom this week.

Anyway, I blogged this plant last month, so you can go read all about it there, if you are so inclined.

…caudex photo, since I had previously posted strange bloom photos and now today I’ll post some leaves. Now you can puzzle the pieces together and figure out what the whole thing looks like!

I hope you are having a happy holiday weekend. I am.

…I posted a strange bloom photo of a Cyphostemma juttae. And people asked us what the rest of the plant looked like.

Now you know what the caudex looks like. Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some leaves.

Echinopsis huascha

The angle of the photo really tells the tale of why this is called the Red Torch Cactus.

On the other hand, the flower color is actually pretty variable.

The stems can get to 3′ tall in clusters, and it looks a lot like an Echinocereus, but it’s from South America so it’s an Echinopsis. Although it has been mistaken for Echinocereus, and used to be called Trichocereus, and sometimes grouped with the Lobivias.

This is a Cyphostemma juttae. The caudiciform plant below is quite receeded in the distance, while the blooms up front are actually tiny, barely visible without the camera. I would guess maybe 2mm, but then I don’t know metric so I could be totally wrong.

Anyway, it’s not a good photo, but what the heck, it’s bloggable.

As for the plant, it’s a great sub-tree in the grape family. Large, slow-growing caudex to 6 feet tall with thick broad leaves and branches only on top. The blooms, and later the fruit, come on vine-like stalks, which are kinda visible here.

Peeling bark, too. Woohoo!

I just get an unpleasant feeling from the photo, though. In person, since they’re barely visible, no negativity at all.

Echinopsis marsoneri

These are a funny looking small barrel-like cactus that can grow to around 3″. Dark purple in full sun. Partial shade in the heat. I love the slightly dessicated look in the summer, all wrinkly. When they are full of water, they are less interesting.

Keep blooming all summer long. Well, I suppose if you traveled with them in October to Australia to catch a 2nd summer in a row then maybe they’d be pretty fed up and would stop blooming before the end of the endless summer. But I can’t be sure.

This cultivar is called “Henry’s Bookcase”. I don’t know why.

Rebutia pygmaea – small plants, small flowers, but what a color. They can double in number in a year, but they don’t get any bigger than a thumbnail or so.

If I could compose a song to these plants it would go something like this:

Rebutia, my rebutia
Oh I long to dance with my rebutia…

Well, you get the idea.

Echeveria setosa

A soft and fuzzy echeveria that is often hybridized from. They lay prone, flat on the ground and are a good respite from the more active echeverias, like E. nodulosa and all those curly edged hybrids.

Cleistocactus samaipatanus

A fantastically shrubby, thin-stemmed, Cleisto that is quite the hardy specimen. Those bloom tips open up so wide that a hummingbird has no excuse not to pollinate it.

Opuntia streptacantha

A nice thick-leaved prickly pear with good edible tunas. You know you want to try it, but you can’t get past the spines, now can you? Well, here, let me help. Yes, like so, you peel back, knock the spines off, grab hold, good, good, now, OOPS… OK, that’ll hurt.

Opuntia picardoi

A miniature prickly pear with nasty sharp spines and overactive glochids.

Sedum alboroseum “medio variegatum”

Man, these look delicious. Really, they’re not. They taste terrible, and are a natural purgative, no less. That makes them somewhat deer-resistant.

They get large sprays of yellow blooms. They’re prone to powdery-mildew, and they die back in winter down to the ground. But it’s also a nice surprise when they come back because they’re so vibrant and colorful even before the blooms arrive.

Sempervivum “Emerald Empress”

In our continuing series of Sempervivum photos, I gotcha this one right here. Well, what do you think? It’s got nice thick leaves, green and pink hues, pups coming off the sides. It’s a winner!

The name “Emerald Empress” comes from the ancient greek phrase,

καὶ εἶπεν ἄνθρωπος τῷ πλησίον αὐτοῦ· δεῦτε πλινθεύσωμεν πλίνθους καὶ ὀπτήσωμεν αὐτὰς πυρί. καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς ἡ πλίνθος εἰς λίθον, καὶ ἄσφαλτος ἦν αὐτοῖς ὁ πηλός.

But you can still refer to it by it’s English translation if you like.

Sempervivum “Red Heart”

I think this is going to turn out to be Sempervivum week here at the blog.

I don’t know why this one is called “Red Heart”. I did some research, and there is no Victorian novel in its background. I don’t know of anyone, fictional or otherwise, named Red Heart. I certainly don’t know any propagators with the nickname Red. Sometimes they name plants after a daughter or niece, and that would seem to be a good thing to check out if I have more time later.

Sempervivum “Black”

These cultivated rosettes are called “Black” not because of the dark tips, nor because as they grow they look like Echeveria “Black Prince”, but rather they were named after a fictional character named Doriet Black in a very popular Victorian novel from 1882.

In the novel, The Mystery of Doriet Black, Doriet Black was a fishmonger on the backstreets of Manchester, however he was also a secret agent married to a Prussian Princess. So you can see how the Victorian gentlemen of the time, amateur gardeners all, thought that might be an appropriate character to name a clever little sempervivum after. And they were right. We thank them for their resourcefulness.

However, things went bad in the sequel, The Deathly Hollow of Black, when Doriet Black turned out to be a triple agent in the service of an Italian Counterfeiter. Because of the uproar in 1886 over this 2nd novel, really more of a novella, the plant went out of style for over 100 years, returning to the succulent-growing public only in 1990.

Well, we’ve been calling this one C. vulpis-cauda, but NO! Now that it’s bloomed, we have a better idea what it might be.

It’s Cleistocactus ritteri. Change all your labels, fix that small place in your brain where this cleisto is filed, and get with the program.

Uncarina roeoesliana

These caudiciform shrubs can get up to 7 feet tall! I’m skeptical. But they do get yellow flowers all year round. And they’re easy to take care of, because if the leaves start wilting, well then it’s time to water, and the leaf pops back up and is the picture of health. In other words, it’s one of the easy plants that form a caudex.

Also notice how the bloom is actually quite long and tubular, with only the leading edge of the petals wide open.

Echinocereus baileyi

These are a very attractive white-spined small hedgehog cactus from the town of Philo, Texas. Just kidding, they’re found throughout Texas and Oklahoma. They seem to get about 6″ tall, and lots of fuzzy white buds that explode into happy pink and purple goodness.

Alright, now that’s just about enough of that. If I’m dazzled by even one more Echinocereus grandiflora I’ll just fall off the face of the earth and never be heard from again. Think I’m exaggerating? Just try me. I dare you.

In the meantime, you can click on the picture to see the larger version, if you like.

Echinocereus grandiflora comes through again with a gigantic thing, a humongous flowery mass of petals, a cactus flower. I’m almost tired of these outstanding things. But not yet.

Cyphostemma juttae

Trees to 6 feet tall with branches and leaves on top, vining bloom stalks with little grape-like fruits. In the grape family. Peeling bark.

Mammillaria calacantha

I recommend clicking the image to see the larger version.

The final photo in our series. First we had a horizontal composition, and then a vertical closeup. Let’s finish up a bit further back, see more of the plant.

Now we can really see the cactus, in shadow, but still clearly there. This also allows us to see the extreme funnels leading up to those fluffy white flowers. Now we’re focused on the front flower, so there is no other foreground element at all. I like the large amount of black space at the top. It really helps to exaggerate the dizzying height.

Since we’re a little further back than the other two shots, this one takes on a painterly style, little daubs of white against a black background, with hints of color on one side of the cactus – almost a Rembrandt effect, if I may be so bold, of deep thickly painted shadows. Well, that’s how I see it.

So oto review, the 3 photos are very similar, since obviously they’re the same plant, and almost even the same angles, and yet the effect is so different that I just can’t decide between them.

Echinopsis subdenudata

Here we have the classic closeup posed flower picture. I like the way the other 2 blooms frame the picture, but they’re barely there. The focus is definitely on the one flower. It kind of makes you want to dive right in, like a bee.

Today I’ll be exploring composition of a photograph, using a single plant in bloom. I’ve taken 3 pictures, all with the same background, all with the same cactus with 3 blooms open.

Echinopsis subdenudata

Here we have the focus on one bloom, but with the other 2 blooms providing both the foreground and the background. Plus there’s the hint of the cactus at the bottom that these blooms are protruding from.

The angle gives us a good look inside the bloom to the reproductive parts and stuff.

Man, those white fluffy flowers….

There are so many Echinocereuses and so many of them are hybrids that I just can’t keep track. So I don’t know if this is a species Echinocereus or a c.v. or a hybrid. I just don’t know, and you’ll just have to live with that. However, I can tell you that the plant is small. And someday I’ll post a picture of the inside of these flowers, since they’re pretty special when they open….

I featured this blooming plant last month here and here. But I just can’t resist another shot of the giant flower on top of these small columnar hedgehogs.

Echinocereus armatus

Rebutia narvaecense

These little rebutias are amazing bloomers, with dozens of over-sized pink flowers coming from each and every one of those tiny little 1″ barrels. Just imagine after they’ve pupped and there’s a whole cluster of them! Dozens of blooms multiplied by dozens of stems! That’s a whole gross of flowers. And we can thank the good deserts of Bolivia for this spectacular show.

I wonder if I should try to edit the wikipedia entry for Bolivia? Nahhh, my recent adventure with the bontaka was enough.