E . Misouriensis blooming...

The cemetary cactus, which I've written about rather extensively in the past, and graces the header of my blog, has honored more with a bloom today. Many more coming, and rhe bright red berries from last years fruit make the plant look good too!

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?

Well, Hildy has up and done her thing again... looks like she'll be doing it tomorrow and the next day too...

This pic was taken with a cheap kodak. At 6 am. I am a bit past staying up until 1 am to take pics of cactus blooms in their full glory. I've done it before. Several times. The thrill is gone.

Seriously, if you look at past posts... you will see that I've stayed up till the wee hours of the morning, sometimes aiming my trucks headlights to light up a shot... on one memorable occasion even balancing a flashlight, umbrella and camera in the rain, all so I can produce a pic for my blog friends. No more... Love ya to death... But...

Besides, I get up at 5:30 am to get ready for work anyway. Which is really surprising to me. When I worked in bars, that's about the time I came home and crawled into my coffin.

Regardless, there's Hildy up there. Four blooms tonight, more over the next couple of days. Probably more blooms over the next couple of months too.

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?