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...

 

strange ideas from my brain...

So... when I'm driving I have time to think.  Some would argue TOO MUCH time to think, but there we are.  Now, you can fill your time up with the radio and blast your brains with music and other such nonsense, but I don't.  I like to think. 

Well over a year ago, I used to listen to a lot of NPR.  And it was a couple of their news stories which inspired a little tumble in my head... and there's something that's been festering in there for quite a while, and I'm getting a little tired of mulling on it, so I'm going to throw it out there and see if A) I'm a little insane or B) if anybody else out there thinks anything about this is workable. 

It starts with ethanol. 

One or Two years ago, when gas prices started to go through the roof, there was a lot of talk everywhere about alcohol being used as fuel.  NPR had a few stories about it.  The one that stuck in my head was how Egypt has been using the straw left over from their rice crops to make ethanol for well over 20 years now.  Very practical of those Egyptians I thought... and went on about my merry way. 

Then, one or two weeks later, there was another story.  This time they were talking to somebody about getting grain, specifically corn (if you're in the US it's called corn, the rest of the world calls it maize) turned into alcohol here in the US.  He kept talking about how the technology didn't exist, and how it was going to take several million bucks of government money to do the research.  It was also mentioned that straw or corn silage can be turned into alcohol, but that wasn't practical, because it had to be chopped up fairly small so that it would ferment, and they would again have to spend several million dollars to create the right choppers and such... and for several reasons, this entire interview thoroughly pissed me off. 

One, I distinctly remember thinking, "Hillbillies have been turning corn into alcohol for well over 300 years but this bunch of MIT graduates can't figure it out?" 

Then I remember thinking something along the lines of "Egypt has been turning straw into alcohol for years.  Are you telling me that Egypt has technology we don't?"  Don't get me wrong, Egypt is not exactly 3rd world.  They are a civilized and technological country, but I was always under the impression that the US was a bit more advanced. 

Now, here's the thing.  I've mentioned before that I'm a depressive.  This has many disadvantages.  But it has advantages too, most people don't see that, but it does.  Here's one of them.  Depressive minds tend to dwell on things.  What most people do is they get upset with something and they move on.  What we do is get upset with something and hold on to it.  And we don't get distracted from it.  It kind of sits there like a big lump while we walk around it, stare at it, occasionally poke it with a sharp stick.  If we were easily distracted by the next thing... we wouldn't be depressed... we'd be following every new thing that came along. 

So here's what's happened... this idea has been growing in my mind for a while now.  I'll come up with what may or may not be a decent solution, only to hit a roadblock or other problem, and now I'm going to spell out some of my conclusions.  They may be stupid, they may be interesting, they may be totally unworkable... but here they are. 

First... about that straw, silage, whatever being ground up to a small enough size to ferment... I also know from recent events that they have grinders that can turn an entire automobile into little pieces of one inch metal.  Seriously, that's what happened to all those cars that were traded in with that government program a while ago.  I'm 99% sure that the technology to grind up corn silage into small chunks already exists.  If I'm not mistaken... I think it's called a wood chipper.  Now, above mentioned MIT grad was displaying a typical tendency of engineers.   Namely... why on earth would you adapt technology that already exists when you can get the government to write you a check so you can re-invent the wheel?  Seriously, folks... go to Home Depot and buy a few wood chippers.  After you go into production you can build a new machine to refine the process, hopefully using your profits instead of my tax dollars.

And as for corn... well, that bothered me.  I'm related to corn and soy bean farmers.  I know a bit about it, but not overly much.  I can tell you this... most of the corn(maize) grown in the US is not used for direct human consumption.  Most of it is used for animal feed, and then there's the other by-products, corn oil, corn syrup, etc...  and here's another thing that some research has told me.  We are entirely too dependent on that one crop.  They keep stretching the crops as far as they can go... but one good drought (remember the dust bowl?) or one good fungal disease (remember the Irish potato famine?) and we're in deep shit.  (Sorry about the language, but since I'm just clearing my mind, and not writing any sort of actual presentation or anything, I think it's allowable...) 

What I'm saying is that it might be advisable to steer clear of a crop that's been stretched as far as this one has been. 

Now, also through some research I've learned a few other things.  Alcohol can be distilled from about any plant material. 

The problem with farming corn, and expanding the crops and such is that there is a huge amount of land that has been pretty much farmed out.  Large tracts here in Texas are used as pasture for cattle and used to be actual grain acrage, but are now lying pretty much fallow.  (I have some other thoughts on this, but one brain maggot at a time.)  The problem is that the land was weakened by too many crops of grains and/or cotton to the point that now it pretty much is used as rather week pasture because most crops won't grow there anymore, and if it was used for other crops, there's little organic matter in the ground to hold water and would require irrigation.  Add to that... the rich topsoil has either mostly washed away or blew away in the aforementioned dustbowl.  That's a major problem with plowing a field every year.  It keeps the soil all loose and it doesn't always stick around after that.

So... lets think about other crops.  After much mulling and stewing and such, (sugar beets looked promising for a moment) I finally stumbled upon an option that you would have thought would have been fairly obvious to me.  Cactus.

Specifically, Prickly Pear cactus.

Here's my thoughts...

1)  They already commercially grow prickly pears (Nopales) for the food industry.  They were quite trendy a few years ago, although their cachet, and their price, is dropping.

2)  The sugar content in the leaves should be high enough to produce a decent alcohol.  (I can't find anything to support this.  Not to mention, I have absolutely no idea who to ask.  Any of you research addicts got any ideas?)   And we don't have to confine ourselves to the one or two varieties that are used as a food item... there are others that grow quickly and on a massive scale that would be good for this purpose. 

3)  They are a perrenial crop and they don't require the field to be plowed every year.  You would go through the field and either place a fresh pad directly in the ground every 3 feet, or you would plant pads that had been rooted over the winter months in greenhouse conditions for a head start.  You might get a crop the first fall, but you'd be better off letting them wait till next spring.  I'm even pretty sure that with the faster growing varieties you could even get several crops during the second season, and bigger crops during the following ones as the plants produce more coming off the established root systems.  This is in opposition to most perrenial crops which only produce one crop a year.

4)  They do not require super rich soils, massive amounts of fertilizer or insecticides. 

5)  Irrigation would be minimal to none.

6)  You could grow it on land that is in many ways not suitable for any other crop. 

7)  I'm pretty sure that you could even double purpose the land... I have a strange vision in my head of fields with long lines of prickly pears,  separated by 20 foot rows of grass that have cattle or sheep grazing in them.  Sounds strange, doesn't it?  However... Cattle or any livestock animal are kept out of corn fields because they eat the corn.  I don't think that's a problem with the cactus, especially the thorned varieties.  Plus... livestock does what it does, primarilly, eat grass and produce manure that would provide all the fertilizer the cactus needs...

So... there's that brain maggot out of my way.  for the moment.  I have a strange feeling that there's another few ideas gonna spring out of this. 

Now... all I need is someone with 5 acres, a few cactus cuttings, a few cows, a wood chipper, and a distillery in the back barn to test it out... LOL

Well, I had a good run yesterday...

I had to pick up something... (It's a high security delivery so I'm not allowed to say what or which company... but I must say that it's probably not as important as everybody is making it out to be... it's not uranium or anything, and I seriously doubt that Osama Bin Ladin is gunning for me... ) before 4 pm on Tuesday and deliver it to Oklahoma before 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I don't really mind this... these overnight deliveries pay extremely well, but it does make planning your life a little difficult...

So I picked up the box, kept it locked up until 2 am, woke up then took off for Oklahoma.

Now, when planning my route I ran into a glitch. I usually avoid toll roads. The ones in Dallas only save me about 3 minutes on a trip, and aren't worth the money. But if you're going to Oklahoma from Texas, you can take the $1:50 toll road and get where I was going in 3 hours or take another route, across what my GPS insisted were unpaved roads, and get there in 5 1/2 hours, not to mention the waste of gasoline... Very clever of those Oklahomans... got them quite a little money-maker there.

Now, Oklahoma is a beautiful state, full of rural pastures and scenery.

Not so much at 4 AM though... Nice skies full of stars... which my camera won't capture, but not really much else.

and I developed a tire issue... a slow leak.

Stopped a couple of times to fill the air up.

Got to Lawton, made my delivery, then waited around for a used tire store to open up. While I'm waiting for the tire store, I get a call from the person I just made the delivery too... seems that it wasn't supposed to get there until after 10, and he's quite irate as he just got woke up at home when I made the delivery. I explain that the order came through to be delivered before 7:30. Finally, we determine that someone in the main office is a total jack-ass... and we're all good. Then I got my new tire, and back on the road... this time going to Wichita Falls, TX... so back on the toll road I go.

Picked up, and finally, on the way back, I saw something worth taking a pic of... well it's worth photographing if you really stretch your imagination... Opuntia leptocaulis...
They're commonly called "christmas cactus" or 'Christmas cholla" by the more polite locals... and those little red berries are why. They show up bright red during the holidays... of course it's well into spring now, and the local mockingbirds have pretty much cleaned them off...

Now, if your not so polite of a local, you call them " that (insert cuss word here) cactus"

The plants have viscious little spines, and tiny little pads that break away at the slightest touch, and dig right into you. They're the bane of ranchers.

They're scattered throughout the state, and there seem to be varieties... the ones I see down around Austin are lighter in color and the sections seem longer. I once had one of them in the yard, but it didn't like our slightly tougher winters. Never bloomed and eventually just gave up the ghost after about 5 years.

These are growing north of me, and would most likely handle our winters like a dream. Might even think it was on a tropical vacation. So yes, I used extreme caution and brought a few little sections home to root. If you'd like to know more about them, try this link... or for a more detailed scientific discussion, try this link...

Anyway, I eventually dropped what I picked up in Wichita Falls in Dallas, and then I went home after driving 12 hours straight and collapsed in a small coma. And then, I woke up at midnight. I'd try to get something useful done, but then, come time to go to work in a few hours, I'll be tired out, so I'm using this time for lolling around doing nothing. I haven't had a good loll in a while.