Opuntia microdasys

Opuntia microdasys, and the varieties of the species, are common houseplants, often encountered in dish gardens or in small pots at big box stores. 

 

Fortunately, O. microdasys is attractive and tends to be of a size that it can be impressive without being troublesome, it's maximum size is three feet tall and wide, but in pot culture, you can expect about half that.  It is therefore common as a houseplant, and for some collectors, (who let's face it, can be pretty picky about what plants they're willing to have around) this may be the only prickly pear allowed to rub shoulders with their much rarer specimens. 

 

 

This native of Mexico is heavily covered with glochids, which are the small hair-like spines that are the calling card of prickly pears, and, like a few other species of opuntia, do not have the longer needle like spines of most cacti. 

 

There are four variations of the species that you may encounter... This, with its yellow glochids, is the standard or main species, and may produce yellow blooms. 

 

Opuntia microdasys v. rufida  has glochids that are a cinnamon, reddish brown color, and is sometime called the Teddy Bear cactus. 

 

Opuntia microdasys v. albispina  has glochids that are white, and is sometimes called Bunny Ears. 

 

The other variety of the species is a mutation often referred to as Golden Ruffles,  where each pad of growth grows ruffled edges, and is properly named O. microdasys v. crestata. 

 

Despite the cute common names, don't feel tempted to give them a cuddle.  Glochids are not something that you want to deal with on an up close and personal level.  They're not exactly painful, but they can be maddeningly irritating.  Duct tape pressed against the skin to yank them out is usually the easiest way to deal with them.  To be blunt... I'd rather deal with spines, but there we are. 

 

I've grown all varieties over the years, and the care is more or less identical.  They can take all the sun you can give them.  They appreciate watering about once a week in the heat of summer, but can take less if they have to... if they start looking limp or shriveled, you may need to water them a bit more... potted plants tend to need more water than specimens in the ground.  

 

Currently, I only grow the yellow standard because it's the only variety that is really  winter hardy in my climate.  Here, in the Dallas/Fort Worth area on the line between zone 7 and 8, this plant will survive the winter outside provided it's in a pot, rock garden, or in a part of the yard that doesn't collect water.  The key to almost any cactus surviving a cold winter outside is drainage. 

 

This species can take cold.  But they cannot take cold and wet.  

 

During hard winters, I may lose some of the plant, but there's usually enough to recover so that by late spring it's looking impressive.  However, I don't get blooms off of the outside plants, so I'm probably really pushing it's cold tolerance. 

 

The other forms, do not tolerate cold, and must be moved inside for the winter.  Placed in the brightest window possible, and watered very little, they will usually overwinter fine.   



 

 

 

 

Besides the cold issue... any good cactus soil, or even any potting soil with lots of perlite and sand mixed in will suit it fine.  The plants are pretty heavy feeders, and if they're given fresh soil every spring, they quickly show their gratitude with lots of new growth.  Feed them every other watering with about half recommended strength plant food, they'll be happy. While they're heavy feeders, too much food results in growth that is too lush and too soft to stand up for long, especially to cold... I usually stop feeding the plants in September to help them tough up for the coming winter. 

 

Like all prickly pears, propogation is simple from cuttings.  Actually, the cuttings root so easily, that Opuntia will often propogate themselves without any help from  you.  It's not uncommon to find a pad that has broken off, rooting and growing under the parent... but to do it intentionally... break or cut off a pad, let it sit somewhere for a week or two so that the cut edge will dry out, then pot up the pad in soil.  Within a month it'll be rooted and growing.  If you really want to increase the amount of plants you have, you can actually cut each pad in to four pieces, once from top to bottom and then cut those two pieces in half across.  After the cuts have dried, those four pieces will, when planted, each grow roots and pads.  I once knew someone who would line a black plastic nursery tray with canvas, fill it with potting soil, and place about fifty of these cuttings of cuttings in there.  Each would grow and within 2 months he had plants to pot up and sell in another month.

 

Personally, as an experiment, I once rooted six pads, two of each of the three color varieties, in a hanging basket.  It was interesting looking on the patio, and, with hindsight, it was  such a relief to have a hanging basket that didn't need watered twice a day, that I kind of wonder why I didn't do it again...

 

 

 

 

Consolea

Once upon a time, almost every cactus you see was called a Cereus.  This is generally how plant classification works... It starts very simply.  Water holding desert plants with viscious spines are obviously different from all the other plants, so lets call them the same thing. 

Then, well this spiny plant was obviously a different kind of spiny plant than that one, so you begin sorting them out, and you eventually separate things into groups of genus's of their own, and so on and so forth.  Some of these splits are fairly straightforward... The Giant Saguaro started Cereus giganteus, went to Pilocereus giganteus, and eventually settled into Carnegiea gigantea.  And it's fairly obvious that, say, a Mammillaria is not a Carnegiea.  And some of those Mammillaria are obviously and noticeably different from the others, let's call them Escobaria... etc.

Then science makes an advance, people look at things under their magnifying glasses... then their microscopes, then electron microscopes, then genetic testing comes into play.  All this in the interest of accuracy and making plants easier to ID and actually making it nearly impossible for the average Joe, who let's face it can't reasonably be expected to have an electron microscope laying around gathering dust in the garage, to ID that really cool plant he just bought of the clearance table at Wal-Mart with 100% certainty on his own, so he's relying on the tag stuck to the side of the pot which may or may not be right, because the nursery where the plant came from doesn't have an electron microscope either. 

Let's face it folks... you need a masters degree to understand the language in some of those scientific papers, much less the actual science involved. 

Well, the work separating those cereus types is ongoing, and as more advances happen, will continue.  And some of those diligent little scientists have turned their attention to Opuntia. 

At first, Opuntia seems a fairly straight-forward genus.  Most of them grow in pads or sections.  Most have spines, and at the base of the spine, in the ariole, there are little mini-spines called glochids which are much more troublesome than the spines ever hoped to be.  These are collectively called Prickly Pears.  Some of them are called Cholla.  Most of us can wrap our brains around this pretty easily.

Turns out, not quite as straightforward as we thought.  While, most Opuntia are still Opuntia... it is being split into several genera.  Currently, according to Wikipedia, fifteen genera.  I fully expect more to come... Under the subfamily Opuntioideae, we have:

1.  Austrocylindropuntia (cholla-ish)
2.  Cumulopuntia (cholla-ish.  Actually, even more "ish")
3.  Cylindropuntieae (cholla)
4.  Grusonia (cholla)
5.  Pereskiopsis (most of us wouldn't recognize Pereskiopsis as a prickly pear, or even a cactus)
6.  Quiabentia (another that doesn't even look like a cactus.)
7.  Brasiliopuntia (prickly pear.  A really tall one.  You've probably seen little ones as house plants)
8.  Consolea (prickly pear.)
9.  Milqueliopuntia (stubby cholla)
10.Opuntia (prickly pear)
11.Tacinga (prickly pear)
12. Tunilla (pickly pear)
13. Pterocactus (cholla-ish)
14. Maihueniopsis (prickly pear-ish)
15.Tephrocactus (cholla-ish)

Some sources also list a few others... notable Micropuntia (little chollas) but until everybody straightens themselves out, we're gonna go with what we got. 

Now, all this is complicated by the fact that prickly pears are, as a general rule, highly adaptable and highly variable.  Hence, the plant in the natural habitat, and the plant you have at home may be the same species, but look totally different,  The amount of light, water etc, will all make the plant change it's size, spines, even color.  So it's confusing enough. 

And now, we get to the plant that started all this... It started when a friend of mine bought a prickly pear on the clearance table at Wal-Mart. 

Actually, it was a score.  A really nice one gallon pot full of bright green pads, for five bucks.  I was a little jealous. 

"Where are you gonna put it?" I asked, looking around to the living room windows. 

"In the yard," he answered. 

"You mean on the patio?"

"No.  Out by the garage with that other prickly pear."

"It'll  die!  It won't survive the winter."

"Hell they grow wild in the pasture..."

"Not this kind.  Most prickly pears won't..."

Blank stare.

"It's a damn prickly pear..."

"There are like, a hundred different kinds of prickly pears... and most get killed by a hard frost..."

"Whatever..."  followed by eye-roll. 

So, you're starting to get the idea of why it's kind of important to find out what kind of prickly pear you got...
Anyway, I looked on the side of the pot, and saw the name Opuntia falcate.  I whipped out the smart phone, typed it in and... Nothing. 

So, I took a couple of small juvenile pads, and promised to get back... In case you haven't noticed, cuttings off plants I have to ID is turning into a very convenient way to increase my collection with no investment of money.  Just saying. They're rooting now... actually, they're very well rooted now and starting to show the first signs of growing.

 

And here's what I found out... Yes it's a prickly pear.  Obviously.  And no, it's not an Opuntia.   It's a Consolea falcata.  Or possibly a Consolea macracantha... no way of telling till it gets a few blooms on it, which is probably a while off.  Native to the Caribbean islands, it is listed as critically endangered in Haiti, and may not be there anymore.  (there were 10 mature plants on a beach in Haiti before the 2008 hurricane, which may or may not have wiped them out.  So, if anybody is going to Haiti, you're probably going to hit a beach at some point, so it might as well be this beach, so look around, see if there's any cactus and let us know.) 

 

It seems to produce rather smaller 'juvenile' pads, and look pretty cute, before it puts up longer, round straight growth which grows pads on the end.  The juvenile pads then, over a period of time, waste away.  All of this is pretty far off, but I am sure that it won't survive a winter here, which was really the point, and I won the bet, (FREE PIZZA, WOOOO HOOOO) and got a new plant in the process so I'm doing good...  

 

Since it's native to Haiti, I'm going to assume that, even though it grows in sandy soil near the beach, it still needs a bit more water than our native prickly pears, and I'll water it whenever it gets dry. 

 

Next, and totally unrelated, I was over at Julies blog, A Succulent Life, where she was thrilled to find a grasshopper.  While I certainly can't imagine being happy about that, I did promise to take pictures of one of the more handsome species that frequent the yard here if I got a chance.  Well, when I went out to take a pic of the little prickly pear here, lo and behold, look who was sitting on my Rhipsalis cuttings.  Got a pic before I made him leave... Enjoy Julie...

 

Update... this grasshopper has been ID'd as Schistocerca obscura, commonly known as the Obscure Bird Grasshopper.  I don't know why its called obscure, but there we are...

 

Cactus cutting

 And here's the cutting of the Bad Hair Day cactus. (Epiphyllum phyllanthis v. guatamalense f. monstrose) Actually, I was given two cuttings, which were really huge for cuttings and I've turned into four.  I've placed them in their re-cycled pot, with rooting hormone, which probably isn't absolutely necessary, but I have it here and it may help the process along a little quicker, so why not? 

 

I've watered it well, and now I'll be placing it in it's humidity chamber (which is a fancy name for a zip-lock bag that I bought at the everything for a dollar store.)

 

 

A few additional notes on this plant... the leaves (stems actually) are distinctly stiff and leathery, much more so than any other epiphyllum I've ever dealt with.  Probably part of it's monstrose heritage.  I'm sure it's going to root fairly well, as it seems inclined to put out aerial roots, which can very easily turn into real roots, so I'm not foreseeing any real difficulty. 

 

I also can't find any evidence that this species has been used for hybridization purposes.  (If anybody out there knows of it, please let me know, I'd love to hear about it.) Which I kind of get but kind of don't.  Epiphyllum species (generally called Orchid Cactus because of their showy blooms and orchid-ish culture) are probably some of the most hybridized cactus out there.  I kind of get it, since this species doesn't have a particularly showy flower.  Many 'monstrose' varieties of cactus, no matter what genus, have flowers that are stunted, deformed or plain flat-out non existent.  The non-monstrose variety of this species has a nice respectable 3 to 4 inch wide white, nocturnal flower, borne on a flower tube that can be about 8 inches long , but this monstrose variety bears a 1 inch flower on a tube about 3 or 4 inches long, that may or may not ever fully open.  Since Epi hybridization has always focused on blooms, I can understand why it's never been utilized for hybridization. 

 

This species, and the rik rak cactus (Epiphyllum anguliger, yesterdays post) are the only plants in the genus that are really valued for their foliage.  The other species in the genus are, like orchids, grown for blooms.  Epi's aren't unattractive plants, actually they'd probably be considered a little more attractive than most orchids, some of which can be considered downright ignorable when they're not blooming, but it's the big showy blossoms that are valued. 

 

Still, since you're going to be looking at the leaves for the vast majority of the time, shouldn't there be some consideration for the attractiveness of the things? 

 

It also occurs to me that some of you may be getting a little tired of seeing that bright yellow work table as a base for my plants.  Well... that table seems to be where everything gets done.  Sorry. 

Rik Rak cactus

 I have decided to do plant profiles.  I like them.  I like reading other peoples plant profiles.  I also like having info readily available, and I like doing the research, although I don't like having to re-do the research when I forget something and don't have it saved anywhere.  Besides, it seems to come naturally to me, because I grew up with my mother... She liked plants, but she thought that plant tags were ugly and ruined the looks of the plant, so she would throw them away.  Then there was always some confusion a few months later about what the poor plant was... so at a young age, I learned to write stuff down in a little notebook. 

 

     However, as I got older, I've developed a total inability to keep track of notebooks, random pieces of paper, etc.  A PC or smart phone however, seems a bit harder to misplace.  Usually.  Yesterdays post on the Bad Hair Day cactus was the beginning of this I suppose. 

 

     Basically, I'm  writing these to keep as a reference for myself, but I do hope that you, Dear Reader, might find something useful in here too. 

 

     All that said... todays plant is (drum roll please...) Rik Rak Cactus.  Some of my research also says it's called Moon cactus or Queen of the Night.  I've heard a couple of dozen plants go by those names... but not this one.  Oh well... the actually botanical latin name is Epiphyllum anguliger.  They are native to the rain forests of Mexico, and are epiphytes.  Epiphytes are the princesses of the plant world... growing in an elevated status in the trees, never deigning to touch the ground like those (sniff sniff) COMMON plants.   

 

 

Despite this princess attitude... the Rik Rak is a dead common houseplant, and not particularly demanding.  Like most, if not all, of the Epiphyllums, they are adapted to living in the nooks and crannies of trees in the rain forest.  These nooks collects dead leaves, moss, bird droppings and such, giving seeds or broken leaves something to root in.  While this growing medium can be very rich, there usually isn't much of it, so the plants depend on the daily rain and extremely high humidity to provide moisture.  As the plant grows, it continues to gather debris in its roots.  

 

I acquired this specimen last June at Lowe's hardware store, on the clearance table for $4.50, and it has about doubled in size since then... or it would have if I'd stop taking cuttings off it... more about that later.

 

A close examination of the plant,  which I like to call 'forensic gardening,' exposes the plant for what it is.  Not so much a single plant as a collection of about 20 cuttings.  

 

 

Now, there's a definite reason for this. 

 

In a nutshell, to turn a single cutting into a plant that's big enough for the nursery to sell would take a year or more.  That's a huge investment of time and resources, space, fertilizers, care, wages, electricity for artificial lights and heating... etc, etc, etc.  This would make the plants expensive to produce, and expensive to sell.  By putting several cuttings in a container, when each cutting produces 2 to 3 new leaves, the pot is full and fluffy, and you can sell it within 1 to 3 months(depending on the species and type of plant)  It's much more cost effective. 

 

The problem for the home gardener is this... sure it's a great looking pot now, but each and everyone of those cuttings has the potential to become a full grown plant that's about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide.  And it's not going to do that while crammed in there with its 20 cousins, there's just not enough room, nutrition or, well, anything...

 

Fortunately, while these are quick growing for a cactus, they're not that quick growing.  Sometime next spring I'll split this into separate pots.  Either four hanging pots or small individual 4 inch pots which I'll sell at the flea. 

 

Until then... the care of this plant is pretty straight forward.  It has to have bright light.  By that I mean extremely bright shade to more light that you'd think it could handle.  One of the reasons that the plant adapted to the tree tops is that the floor of the rainforest doesn't get that much light, and high in the trees they're often exposed to full sun... however, I've found that hanging on the edge of the front porch suits it just fine.  It gets the slanting light in the morning and afternoon directly, while getting shade from the hot noon day sun. 

 

While some growers try to duplicate their native conditions with quick draining soils, and put them in greenhouses with 80% humidity and mist them daily, most of us just don't have that option. 

 

Next spring, when I divide these cuttings, they will need rich well draining soil.  Here in Texas, we don't have the humidity it would like here, so I try to use soil that holds on to some more moisture for it.  A plastic hanging basket works fine.  While the plants can get big, their root systems aren't extensive.  The roots are however tough and strong, after all the plant is adapted to hanging on to a tree for dear life.  Remember when I said 'princess?'  Think 'really really determined princess.'

 

In the past, I've found that a rich potting soil like Miracle Grow or Scotts puts out, mixed with common wood chip mulch will drain quick enough but still retain enough moisture to make the plant happy.  Some growers recommend and orchid mix, which is too expensive for my taste... but if you're willing, go for it.  If you want to make your own... compost, peat moss and un dyed wood chips in equal amounts sounds about right.  You can add perlite or vermiculite if you wish, but the wood chips loosen it up enough to allow drainage.

 

Generally any good plant food works.  I suppose, if I was going for absolute show stopping plants I would invest in orchid fertilizers to go with the orchid mix, but there are too many perfectly acceptable and affordable fertilizers out there.  Since I'm in Texas where in the heat of summer it reaches 100+ degrees here, and doesn't rain for a month at a time, I have to water once a day minimum, sometimes every morning and every evening, (hence that up there about soil that retains some water) fertilizer residues don't build up in the soil, and I feed these and the other jungle cacti every Saturday.  About half recommended strength on the label.  They do just fine.

 

It's almost impossible to over-water these cactus.  As long as the potting mix drains well, they can take about all the water you can give them... just don't let them sit in water and you'll be fine.

 

The plants zig zag leaves (actually stems, but everyone calls them leaves) give it the common name of rik rak cactus.  The leaves do have, in the valley of the zag, some small spines.  They're not serious spines, enough to remind you that you're dealing with a cactus. 

 

They're not that troublesome, certainly not as annoying as the small hair like glochids you have to deal with on a prickly pear.  If they don't brush off, try pressing a piece of duct tape on the skin and pulling it off. 

 

The stems are handsome enough without flowers, and since this pot is a collection of cuttings less than a year old, expecting blooms would be a bit much, although this is about the time of year you would expect it to start setting buds, when the summer heat has started to give way to the autumn rains.  The blooms are white, with the outer petals or sepals a red or pink.  The blooms are nocturnal, opening well after sunset, so you may have to stay up late to see them.

 

The plant is easy to propagate.  Take a stem section and put it in a pot of soil.  You can use rooting hormone if you want, but it usually isn't necessary.  The plant will be rooted and putting out new stems in about a month, much like the cuttings in the pic below.  If the stem is a large one, cut it into sections that are 3 to 6 inches long, and it becomes several cuttings, like the cuttings that were filling my pot above, and the cuttings in the little coffee cups below.

 

 

 

The plants are so easy from cuttings that they're usually not grown from seed, but if your plant produces flowers and fruit, it's not that difficult and you may want to try.  Let the fruit get extremely ripe on the plant.  Split the fruit open, spread the seeds over the top of a pot filled with damp, sanitized peat moss and cover with plastic wrap.  Or put the pot in a big ziplock bag.  You should have seedlings within 2 weeks if not sooner.  You can dry seeds to save for later if you wish.  These plants are rain forest dwellers... so while some seeds like or require a drying out period to do well, drying out isn't really part of their life cycle.   

Bad Hair Day Cactus

 Or to be more specific... Epiphyllum phyllanthus v. guatamalense f. monstose.  Yeah... now try to imagine someone with a very thick southern accent trying to say that.  And, since I couldn't find a common name for it... I have dubbed it the Bad Hair Day cactus, because it was either that or Stripper Hair cactus, and Bad Hair Day cactus just sounded better.  And to make it even more interesting... there's evidently some confusion about Epiphyllum phyllanthus v. guatamalense f. monstose.

 

 

You see, evidently there's an Epiphyllum guatamalense already.  That may or may not have anything to do with this plant.  There's also an Epiphyllum phyllanthis v. guatamalense that has straight non-monstrose leaves.  Now the whole purpose of latin botanical names is to avoid confusion.  But there's something about a taxonomist that evidently doesn't want anybody to actually know the name of anything.  Maybe it's because everything has pretty much been named already, so they have to justify their existence by renaming things.  I'm pretty sure that's what happened to Aloe vera.  The entire planet knew Aloe vera.  Worldwide... then TAH DAH... it's suddenly Aloe barbarensis.  I know... there's been entire papers written to justify the change, and the reasons are valid enough.  I'm not saying that the change isn't valid, just that it's annoying, and I'm willing to bet that a large part of it was some botany geek sitting around with a bug up his nose and suddenly deciding to make trouble.  Or that's my opinion.  Not that anybody gives a dang about my opinion. 

 

And now that I got THAT off my chest, about this plant.  If you read yesterdays post, you know that there's a dealer named Barbara who makes mummified bugs into small sculptures.  That are way cool.  She also brought some plants in to sell.  This was one of them.  She showed it to me, and she had me stumped.  I had never seen that plant before in my life... I knew it was a jungle cacti, but that was it.  She didn't know what it was either.  She'd gotten a 'start' from someone who didn't know what it was, and for all I know that person had gotten a 'start' from someone who didn't know what it was.  Hell, it's distinctly possible that 'starts' from this plant had been handed down for the last century by people who had no idea what they were growing.  Which would really annoy the aforementioned taxonomist.  Well they can just put that in their pipe and smoke it. 

 

She snipped off 2 cuttings for me, and sent me on my way, with a promise that I would find out what it was.  I knew it was a jungle cactus.  I knew she told me that it bloomed... and this plant had buds...



 

And I knew that it also produced little pink fruits that were decorative in their own way. 

 

 

 

And that's all I knew.  I went to Cacti Guide (that's a link, or it's on the bottom right of your browser) and didn't have any luck.  At a loss, I sent some pics to the wonderful guys at the Cactus Jungle blog.  I haven't heard back from them... but hopefully when I do, it'll confirm the ID I finally came up with. 

Or not.  I might just give up and start slapping random strangers on the street. 

 

Finally, I went back to the Cacti Guide and clicked on individual plants... went through all the rhipsallis, which I didn't really expect to find it there, the fruit was wrong, but I was more or less hypnotized by the process by then, before I finally went to Epiphyllums, and after clicking on the phyllanthis there were three pics, and one of them looked like the plant in question.  The other two, however, had long flat leaves.  It did not however mention the v. guatamalense f. monstrose part of the name, so that started another hour of Google searches... and that's how I finally came up with it. I also ended up with a slight headache. 

 

I also found out that this plant is considered 'fairly rare' although there's some mention of people picking up pots of it at Home Depot, usually with an Exotic Angel tag that reads 'Rhipsallis species' and that there are some vendors out there who sell unrooted cuttings of this plant in the price range of $7 to $9. 

 

After all of that, I finally determined that the cuttings should be placed well draining moist soil and they would root readily.  Which, lets face it, was what I was gonna do anyway, so it all left me kind of wondering why I had just wasted 2+ hours of my life. 

 

Oh well. 

 

Nice to get back to plant posts...

 

a bright shiney morning...

Don't get all excited... I don't have a new camera yet... can't justify the expense because of other stuff going on in my life. This is a really crappy cell phone pic.

yep... the peanut cactus, 'rose quartz' is blooming it's fool head off after the HUGE storms last night... here in my part of Texas, we just caught the tag end of the things... through the midwest... well parts of Oklahoma came might near to being scraped off the map as far as I could

tell.

But these cheered me up a little this morning, and quite frankly I needed it... not gonna go into details at the moment, but let me say this...

My Grandmother, who was a very wise woman, always said... "The good Lord don't give you any burden you can't carry. But there are times when I've wished He didn't have such faith in me." Let's just say... I know what the hell she was talking about and leave it at that, OK?

cats birds and cactus...

First... we got rain! Not much, but enough to wet everything down...

Next... we got dead birds! Phennig was very proud of himself this morning and brought this home. I can only hope it's the mockingbird that has been pecking holes in my tomatoes...



And now, we got Leuchtenbergia principis, also known as the agave cactus...


I saw this somewhere... I've been wanting one for a while, but I hadn't seen one to buy. Actually, the only one I'd ever seen in person was at the Ft. Worth Botanic Garden, through the windows of the greenhouse... so when I saw one in a big box store, I grabbed it.

I know it doesn't look like a cactus. It looks like an agave. But those leaves aren't leaves... they're the plants tubercules.

We all know that some cactus produce ribs of spines, and others produce bumpy tubercules. These are tubercules taken to an extreme level... to the point that they look like leaves. They'll get up to 6 inches long, and the entire plant can get to 2 feet tall... This is the only species in the genus, but the genus is very closely related to barrel cactus, and they can produce intergeneric hybrids referred to as Ferobergias.

And those spines aren't half as mean looking as they appear either... they're papery.

And that's as exciting as it gets around here.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Chamaelobvia 'Rose Quartz'

And this morning we have blooms from a wonderful Chamaelobvia "Rose Quartz", one of the hybrids of Peanut Cactus... I'm not even going to get into the nomclamature on this... lets just say that there are people out there who call this Lobvia, Echinopsis, and a few others... it's one of the plants that have historically bounced around from genus to genus. Yes, I realize that we should all know the accurate latin names of our plants. It would, however, be very helpful if you people made up your minds what they were before you twisted my arm to remember it.

I will take on the 'Rose Quartz' part of the name though... I've seen the rock called rose quartz. They're pale, milky pink. Absolutely nothing to do with these vibrant ruby toned blooms. I realize that the people who develop the cultivars and hybrids get to name them, but there should be some standards...

Anyway, this plant showed up at the house last July, in this post.

Peanut cactus are one of the easiest cactus to grow, and very rewarding. Repeated flushes of blooms all summer, unlike most cactus which bloom more or less once and you better be waiting for it with camera poised when it happens, cause it will only be there for a few minutes... Culture is simple. Pot it, stick it in the sun, and throw some water in it's general direction every once in a while. Come winter, stick it in a window, and try to remember which window next spring.

Pseudoechinopsis

well, I woke up at 5 am out of habit, and I don't have to be anywhere until 9:30 so I was goofing off with the plants... as much as you can in the dark that is...

I did have this little guy blooming outside the back door this morning... one of those annoying ID's... Pseudoechinopsis 'dominoes' although the tag also says Echinopsis species... I don't really like those kind of ID's... it's not a real ID as far as I'm concerned...

And the tag didn't say one darned thing about it being a night-bloomer. Which is OK I suppose, but not really... all it had was a bunch of standard Echinopsis info that I'm not entirely sure is going to be accurate for this plant... I'd like to know how big the plant gets, if it produces offsets or just sits there like a lump, what kind of temperatures can it be exposed to... that sort of thing.

And of course, there's nothing on the web about it at all...

I'm pretty sure that it's a hybrid of some sort, only because most echinopsis you see are and I don't think the name pseudoechinopsis is valid, but I certainly may be wrong.

Other than that... I couldn't tell you.

Anyway... I brought the thing in and took a pic. It is a nice enough plant, and it blooms well. Night blooming plants have the advantage of blooming when I'm home, but they have the disadvantage of blooming when I'm asleep, and usually when I can't stay up all night to see them because I've got things to do in the morning.

And, just as an aside... The second Sago palm is definitely putting up leaves... I'm not expecting as much from this one. 1) the trunk is smaller which means the plant is probably younger and 2) it only had 4 leaves left alive on the plant when I found it, so it's probably not been photosynthesising as much energy for new growth as the other plant. But we'll see, won't we?

cactus in the rain...

First, just so I won't be accused of Prickly Pear abuse, I would like to point out that the neglected Optunia humifusa from the previous post has been potted up in his own 5 inch clay pot, and will soon, no doubt, be happily growing along... the dead looking pad in the middle is typical of the species. Old pads die off as the new ones grow and root... the miniaturized pad that's lying on the soil surface already has new roots going into the ground at least an inch. The new pad that's growing up from the old roots will probably end up regular sized for the plant, what with new soil and the right amount of light, so it'll grow out at least 4 inches... we'll see.

It's been raining for 5 days straight! All my neighbors keep gushing about how we need it... I keep reminding them that I grow cactus, and I don't need it! The Pavonia keeps opening up it's blooms though, even if they do end up looking a little droopy from the water...

And Charcoal Briquette Kitty does not like this one little bit...

But the lower temps and extra water have prompted Hildy (Cereus hildmannianus) to put out some new buds. 15 that I've counted, although they're low on the plant and hard to find among the Prickly Pear pads that surround the pot. There may be more. And more buds may yet form higher on the plant... we'll see.

I will be picking up a new (used) truck tomorrow. Sorely needed, I assure you. My little Isuzu in about on it's last legs, but I'll probably keep it until I'm sure the new one isn't spending too much time in the shop.

I don't like spending money. I'm not particularly good at it, and it's kept me in a tempermental, worried fit over the last few days. Silly of me, but there we are. But I've bit the bullet... and now it's done.

negelected prickly pear

Most of us have one of THOSE spots in the yard. It's that spot between the fence and the shed, or behind the garage. That place where you shove things until you can deal with them later, and then the classic adage, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," kicks in and you just plain forget about it.

Or maybe you remember it, when you're shoving something else out there, and you think, "Oh, that's right, I wanted to do something with that..." then you walk away and forget it all over again.

This is what happened here... This started out as a small seedling of Optunia humifusa that someone gave me, and I shoved in this pot and shoved it in a location out of sight, between the house and the pillar that holds up the 4 foot wide eave of the house....

Now, somebody gave me this little seedling 4 years ago. And it's been sitting there, on top of 1 inch of dirt, in the shade of the eaves without any water and totally negelgted. Not bad, huh?

Of course, the pads have stunted to about 1 inch wide, and it's fading to yellow... but it is surviving and I'll probably do something with it eventually... Which is pretty much what I said 4 years ago.

Optunia humifusa is a prostrate cactus that spreads through fields, never getting more than one pad high. The newer pads root where they touch the ground, and the old pads usually die off... It does have very pretty sulfer yellow blooms, and light pink fruits that birds like but aren't really edible for people. Varieties of this species grow throughout the US and into Canada.

I've seen fairly nice displays where they're used as a ground cover, but the habit of the old pads to turn brown and die off, means that it requires maintenance, and the spines and rather viscious glochids on this species make maintenance a painful proposition... which is probably why I stuck it in the corner and tried to forget it.

But, this guy has proven himself very resilient, and I'll probably reward him with a real pot and real dirt and hopefully, he'll end up looking decent.

So I started today by taking my morning cup of coffee out to my lathe house, where I was poking around the plants in the cool of the morning, and I suddenly felt something on the top of my head... turned out to be Phennig, reaching through the lathe and trying to claw my scalp.

Little booger...


The 5 little Ferocactus wislenzeni I ordered from ebay came in the mail today... in an envelope, padded with waste paper, recycled packing peanuts and loose dirt...

And most of the peanuts are those biodegradable ones, the ones that dissolve in water... and these got just damp enough to get all sticky and gooey and stuck to each other, the envelope, and the plants... really, you'd think the guy would at least have wrapped them in paper. Not entirely happy... but they are 2 inches tall and about that wide (if you count the spines) and they did get here... I'll try to get some better pics after I get them cleaned up and planted/potted.

right now... I'm waiting for my ride to get here so that I can pick up the truck.

That's right... I'm gonna be mobile again... Hide the children, I'm loose!

nothing particularly new...

Well, ever since last Monday, I haven't really seen anything worth taking a pic of in my wandering around... but I wanted to make a post anyway... so I took the camera out in the yard to see what there was to be seen... and here they are in no particular order... This is the street view of my cactus bed in the front yard. The purple coneflowers self seeded a few years ago, and I just left them. I have dug a few out for friends, as they were shading out the rock garden to the right in the pic...
and here's the view from the yard....

here's one of the Texas wildflowers that came up in the yard and I've been very carefully mowing around... I'm gonna take the seeds off of this and scatter them in a better location for next year. It's a Mexican Hat or Black eye'd susan, or prarie coneflower... I think it depends on who's telling you about them...

Next is a Pavonia hastata... AKA rock rose. This small flowered relative of the hibiscus is one of my faves... The bush is a little rampant, and the blooms are small... just shy of 2 inches across... not really that impressive... except the hotter it gets, the more it blooms... a very valuable trait. This bush, in the upcoming heat of August, will be covered with hundreds of these small white flowers when everything else is doing it's level best to crawl under a rock.

The crown of thorns, which I talked about in a previous post when someone abandoned it on my porch just knowing that the local cactus freak would love it... and the Pachypodium...

A little Mammilaria bloom... I forget which one of the top of my head...

And on a corner of the of the front rock garden, an old galvanized bucket that had sprung a leak now is home to a tiny variagated agave, right in the middle, and a Ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) & all the leaf cutting that fell off said ghost plant when I potted it...

And that's kinda what's going on in the yard right now. Nothing particularly new, but still kinda nice...

Later!

My little garden project...

I spent all weekend planting my back alley...

The problem was this. There's about a 3 feet wide strip beside my carport that had to be mowed... and it was a real pain in the backend to drag the lawn mower out there. Usually, when the neighbors mowed, they would go ahead and get all of it. Or when I mowed, I'd get all of it... However, it's rental property, so when I mowed it once last year, the rentors decided they didn't ever have to mow it again. To be fair, they weren't too up on mowing their front yard either, but this year I decided that I'd put down gravel and a rock garden, and any grass left in that strip was not my problem... We'll see how the new tenants feel about it... Here's the finished result...



and here's what I started with...

The wheel-barrow I found on the side of the road on trash day... The wheel basically don't work no more, but I ain't moving it anywhere, so who cares? I punched a few holes in the bottom for drainage, filled it with top-soil and pea gravel, and planted it...
These are rocks that I've been collecting over the last few months, and there are some fossils in there too... the gravel on this is decomposed granite. I used that because 1) it looks good and 2) it packs into a kind of 'crust' that resists being washed away...

This is really an experiment... the grass in there is variegated St. Augustine... in other words, variagated lawn grass. The prickly pear cuttings are nopales from the grocery store... this is a variety that won't mind the extra water I give the grass, and will grow very quickly... They won't however survive the winter here, and will probably die with the first frost. Of course I'll probably be eating them all summer...

In the middle is an old table leg that I was going to use for some project or other, I forget what.

Anyway, the St. Augustine should grow like a demon and fill the tub... strange because it's being sold more as a house or patio plant than anything else, although feasably, I could just let it run crazy and have the first variagated lawn on the block...

Looking at the pics now, there's probably some things that will be reworked over the next few weeks. But it was hot out there, and after 2 days of wrestling with rocks, gravel, and spiney plants... I'm really relieved that I actually finished, and I kind of feel like I actually accomplished something for a change...

The neighbors seem ok with it... or everybody kept slowing down to look as they drove down the alley at least. Most of them smiled and waved... One guy scowled but I've never seen him do anything but scowl anyway... I'm the only person in the neighborhood whose ever planted anything in the alley, and I'm kinda hoping that eventually I'll inspire everybody else. But this is a first-time buyers neighborhood, almost everybody who buys here has never owned a home before and is moving straight in from an apartment. They tend to know very little to nothing about gardening.

A plant and a rant...

Well, true to my blog name... When I post, I usually have a rant, or I have a plant. Rarely will it be both in the same post. Today it is... Lucky you! Aren't you glad you clicked onto here today?

I should start with a little background info I suppose... here's the previous post from a couple of weeks ago...
http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2009/04/cemetary-cactus.html

This is about the cemetary cactus... Specifically the Escobaria missouriensis that were deliberately planted in the cemetary. I didn't tell anybody what cemetary, because these are ancient clumps, and very valuable... well I had a little time off in the middle of the day, and I was within a mile, so I dropped by... the plants would still be in bloom, and I wanted to have a good look into the older part of the graveyard... see if I could pick out the oldest plant... more for something to do than anything else.

Well, the graveyard had recently been mowed... and here's the result...

They mowed right over the cactus... beheading the little guys!

As far as I can tell, this is the oldest clump... on a grave dating from 1891. The plant was probably decent sized and at least 25 years old when it was planted here... the total size was about 3 feet by 1 3/4 feet...

Now it won't kill the plants totally... most are pretty low to the ground to begin with... this next pic is old damage, probably from last year... the black/brown mass in the middle is what will be showing up here soon...

Now, I did start picking up the cut off pieces and knocked off pups from the plants... (Yes, I know it's probably technically stealing plants from a graveyard, but I absolutely dare anybody to tell me that I can't pick up grass clippings if I danged well want to... and besides, I was so burning that they're lucky I didn't have a shovel with me to start salvaging plants... You don't go around haphazardly damaging 100+ year old plants then start whining when people decide to save them from you...and if I did have the shovel on me, and I also saw the lawn maintenance man... well, I would have a shovel and it IS a graveyard... figure it out.)

This is only a fraction of what I got...

I should be able to root 90% of what I picked up...

The truly awful part of it is that those plants were worth from $25 to $200 each... easy... I've seen old clumps bid up to dizzying prices on ebay... and now, this scarred up and deformed, they're not worth 50 cents. I have no doubt they'll survive. They evolved to survive being trampled by buffalo herds. But they're ruined now...

I would try to contact the Cemetary Association, and try to get permission to remove the plants that are in harms way. But, I know Texans, and I'm 99 percent sure they won't give it... I may start a career as a cactus poacher.

But as is... I got some winter hardy cactus rooting... anybody want one?

Storming outside...

And it will be all day tomorrow too...

way too much rain. I know that some of my potatoes have already rotted in the ground... this is Texas... We're supposed to be dry, right? Actually, 2 weeks of rain as spring turns into summer is typical here... not quite monsoon, but close enough for me!

This morning, before the rain hit, I stopped by a tailgate sale... It's a fairly new phenomenon in the states, but I understand that "Boot" sales, (boot being what the British call the trunk of their cars) have become quite the rage in the UK. The way it works is that you load the trunk of your car, or the back of your pick-up, take it to a parking lot where a whole bunch of other people have loaded up their vehicles, and sell everything in it... The result is a bunch of people cleaning out their closets mixed with a bunch of people who deal in flea markets for a living, selling stuff. Kind of a condensed rummage sale. Usually the person who owns or controls the lot charges a fee for the sellers to park... anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks.

Anyway, I didn't really find much, mostly because I wasn't really in the mood to buy... I was just there to avoid mowing the lawn (didn't work by the way, I still had to mow when I got home) but I did find these little guys...

Here's the story... (bear in mind that it was being told by the guy who was trying to sell them...) The guy grew up in Arizona, and these cactus grew wild at his Mothers house... when he moved to Texas he brought a plant with him, and everytime we get a rain storm, some little pieces break off and he roots them. He said they were called Boxing Glove Cactus. They'll grow a bit, then form a 'Fist' on top, then more little branches will come out the side and do the same thing... and so on and so forth...

Well, if the story and description he gave me is accurate, it's the monstose form of the chain cholla, or Cylindropuntia fulgida var. Mammillata Monstrosa. And while he said he keeps his in a pot and carries it in every winter... it's actually hardy to 15 degrees farenheight, and I can grow it outside here... WOO HOO... they were a buck each so I bought two... one to pot up and bring in this winter and the other to leave outside to test it's hardiness... Supposedly, it can get to 8 feet tall. Hmmmmm

All this rain lately has gotten some fungus going... these actually showed up in my tomato straw bales... I'm not worried about them, they help decompose the straw into somethng the plants can use. And they're kinda cute...

The straw bales are actually working out well in this rain... they do retain water, but they drain well enough to avoid the root rot that plauges gardeners this time of year here...

And my annual battle with these little critters has started... CACTUS WEAVELS!


I've always called them cactus weavels. I don't know what they actually are... all I know is that they show up every year and the pierce the pads of my prickly pears to suck the sap and in the process make them look like this...

See those ugly yellow dots? NOT ACCEPTABLE. They won't kill a plant, but they will weaken it. And once a cactus is scarred, it's permanant. This happened when I tried Grandmas method of dried garlic on the roots to make the plant unpalatable to the critters. It works with most plants, but it evidently doesn't work with cactus. So back to insecticides... I tend to use Pyrethrin, simply because it's less toxic to people and pets than most other sprays. It's made from the leaves of English Daisy, if you have some of those around, you can actually make a tea and produce your own. I don't, so I have to buy it...

If anybody out there knows the exact name of these pesty things, and a totally organic method of controling them, please tell me! These plauge the prickly pear that produces the fruit Mom uses to make jelly every year! And don't tell me to pick them off by hand... you can't pick them off without wearing gloves, and they don't make gloves that allow you're hands enough dexterity to pick them off... God knows I've tried!


Later folks.