More ID Questions
Hello Peter and Hap,
Thanks for your time and info during our visit on Sunday. I always enjoy my visits to see you guys and the cacti. We drove down 6th and saw the Agave victoria-reginae with its 5’ tall flower spike. Really cool! Mike was surprised that the actual agave was so small and such a perfect round ball. How old is the little one I just bought? I want to know if I’ll live long enough for it to flower, ha!
I am almost done identifying all the cacti and succulents that I’ve amassed over the years – plants I bought and plants my Mom bought at the grocery store and cuttings my friends broke off and said “here”. So, here are two more pics that I can’t figure out.
The “A” pic is of a plant about 4 years old – it started out as a single rosette and then, voila!, oddness. I’ve just been watching it do its thing. It is also small – about 6-8” across and not tall. I thought it was an echeveria (but then, I thought all rosette-type succulents were echevarias, I stand corrected). The pot is only about 2” deep and maybe 4-5” in size.
The second pic “B” is something I’ve had for a few years. A piece broke off and it started fine into another plant. The leaves are about an inch or two long and split like fingers at the ends. No pokey things along the leaf edges so it’s smooth and the trunks are woody looking like it has bark. The whole thing is only about 5-6 inches wide and about 4-5 inches tall.
I am also wondering about feeding my plants the bloom food. Do I only feed plants that do bloom? Does it matter if I give every cacti and succulent some bloom food? Can it hurt them?..probably not. I am going to try the “watering in” method and will do it when I would normally give them a drink of water.
So, again, thanks for your time and info – it is greatly appreciated.
~Karen
Karen,
Your new baby Agave victoria-reginae will probably take 10-15 years in the ground to get full size and then bloom. If you’re lucky, 20 years.
A. is an Echeveria, possibly E. pumila or E. secunda or maybe E. subsessilis. It’s hard to tell because it’s cresting, which is that flat part of the stem, and the fact that many of the rosettes are all wonky-leaved, rather than perfect round.
B. is Rhombophyllum dolabriforme, Elkhorn, a hardy mesemb related to the ice plants.
All cacti will bloom, so you can feed them all bloom food. In general, if you know the time of year they bloom, start feeding them about 2 months before then. Late winter through spring is a good time for cactus. Some plants like the Agaves and some Aeoniums are monocarpic and only bloom once and then die so you may not want to feed them bloom food.
Peter
