Cactus Blog

Eriosyce esmereldana

Jaxx spends summers with us. This is from last summer on the way home from the beach.

It’s that time of year again, in Marin. Time for the Marin County Fair, through Sunday.

The Marin Independent has this preview for you.

Flippin Flapjacks (Kalanchoe thyrsiflora) are among the succulents in the Dr. Seuss Garden at the Marin County Fair. (Provided by Forest and Kim Starr)

Coreopsis gigantea a large treelike shrub whose clusters of large, yellow flower heads have been called ‘daisies on steroids.’ (Provided by Stan Stebs)

That’s a very strange photo of the coreopsis to use, what with the caption talking about the large daisy flowers and the picture showing all the dead blooms. Someone should deadhead them. But we do like us some C. gigantea, the California native version of the common midwestern perennial. It’s originally from the Channel Islands, but has spread along the Southern California coast. It’s a good choice for a “Dr. Seuss Garden” since everyone around here calls it the Dr. Seuss plant.

So go, to Marin, that is.

From Austin (TX), home of the Austin Jaspers semi-pro basketball team in the Texas Grass League, comes a nice concise set of instructions for growing cactus from seed.

I wonder if Hap will agree with their instructions?

Ever wonder how to prepare cactus fruit? I found this article from the San Francisco Chronicle’s archives, 5 years ago.

Tasty cactus pears keep fans a-prickle

It’s a good idea to process the fruit outdoors. Slit the top across but not completely off. Cut parallel incisions into the skin lengthwise, taking care not to cut into the flesh, then pry apart the skin and reach fingers in to pull out the fruit. Photo, 2001, by Catherine Yoshii

That picture is the key to the whole operation - it really explains it all. Now if they would just do an article about mangos.

That’s the greek meaning of the genus name, so I’ve been told.

Eriosyce esmereldana

This is a special plant, very sexy, with a very rot-prone taproot. From Chile, of course, as are all eriosyces.

I wonder what the rest of the plant looks like? It’s not very big. Check back tomorrow, and maybe we’ll take a look.

Casa Tina in Dunedin, FL serves cactus, and the review from the Examiner is not good.

Ensalada de Nopalitos, the cactus salad, is supposed to be more characteristics of Mexico than any other salad. In this cactus salad, the ingredients were sacrificed. Dunedin, a town known for its Farmers’ Market, it was disappointing to see and taste canned cactus spears on my cactus salad. The flavors of the tin metal can were spread all through out the salad. Cactus paddles laid flat on unwashed leaf lettuce. They could have been crisp tender or even served tender and hot. I would not have even prepared that sort of low quality salad at home. It was valueless.

Oy, I haven’t read a review that bad since Bill O’Reilly read Senator Franken’s “Lies and the Lying Liars”.

Parodia scopa

There are a bunch of subspecies of this little yellow-flowered plant. I don’t know which one this is, but we’ve also had some with white spines.

So for the past few days I’ve been mentioning how natural variation is a good thing, and we don’t need to give all variants their own cultivar names. But in this case there are more differences, so one would use the subspecies designation. If I knew which one this was, I would use the ssp. name. That’s just common sense, in a botanical sort of way.

Science!

Even in Baltimore they need to think ahead to an arid August.

Succulents can help you avoid the inevitable late-summer garden battle

A garden of succulents is created in a strawberry jar from Valley View Farms in Hunt Valley. The plants are a good way of approaching the area’s long, hot summer. (Baltimore Sun photo: Susan Reimer / June 15, 2009)

I had no idea that was as true in Maryland as it is in the Bay Area. So you could learn a thing or two from the good people who bring you crab cakes, for instance:

1. Plan Ahead when gardening so that you don’t have a bunch of dead plants at the end of the summer.

2. Plant Pretty Succulents in strawberry pots for wonderful and beautiful effects that can be enjoyed indoor and outdoor year-round.

3. Did I mention that succulents can help you with items 1 and 2 above?

At the intersection of marijuana and cactus one can get hurt. Out of Florida comes the crime report.

An undocumented alien jumped out a window and escaped during a raid Tuesday night on a marijuana grow house in Levy County…. Task force members said Lopez was… in his bare feet when he was last seen… running across a field dotted with prickly pear cactus plants.

All together now: “Ouch.”

Rebutia krainziana

These small cacti can get as big as 2 to 3 inches! Totally amazing, if you ask me. Usually the flowers are more red than this, but as we know from our discussions over the past few days, I’m a big fan of….

Natural Variation! Yay!

Also, the contrast in the dark stems with the white spine color is very striking even when it’s not in bloom. You do have to look beyond the brightly colored flowers when they’re open to see the small cactus lurking behind it, though.

Did I mention that the genus was named after a 19th century French cactus dealer by the name of Pierre Rebut? Well, since it’s rebutia season, I thought you should know. Oddly, it was grouped and named by a German botanist, Karl Moritz Schumann from Görlitz.

Science!

Rebutias are very popular because not only are the flowers brightly colored and quite large compared to the tiny plant, but there are a lot of them all spring and summer long (depending on the species.)

The NYTimes is featuring succulent containers from Claverack, N.Y.

Stewart Cairns for The New York Times
An agave is the star among hawkweed, allium and hens-and-chicks.

Nice containers.

They’ve planted some Opuntia fragilis in a parking strip up in Washington.

Volunteer Janet Mullen shows where a third cactus bloom is starting among the collection of Sequim cactus in the planter strip outside the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center, 1192 E. Washington St. Photos by Brian Gawley.

If you click through the link you’ll get to see a close-up of the cactus and the flower. I’ve never seen such a large patch of O. fragilis. Usually they’re tiny scraggly bits and pieces with dead spots and weeds; really just a horrible nasty mess. Although we do sell some wonderful little pots of the stuff at the nursery. Anyway, clearly that doesn’t apply to this patch. It appears to be lovingly tended.

From the Telegraph, an article that will set your hair on fire.

Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ has rich, polished dark purple foliage and will tolerate near zero temperatures. Photo: Timber Press

You know, at first that didn’t make sense, since Aeoniums are from the Canary Islands and they really can’t get down as low as 0° F and then of course I realized they were talking C! And then all the advice is right after all! Yay!

On the other hand, this photo credit for the publishing company is rather limited in its generousness. I’ve looked through our Timber Press books and I can’t find the picture, so I can’t give you a better photo credit. If anyone knows the photographer, let them know we are borrowing their photo from the Telegraph without proper credit.

Here we have an attempt at a photographic study of the natural color variation of the flowers for the small cactus Echinopsis chamaecereus, also known as the peanut cactus. The stems also vary quite a bit, but that’s for another day.

I know a lot of cactus growers maintain stocks of named varieties of this plant and some call it other species entirely. But you know, I like this for its natural variation, and insist that it is all one plant.

On the other hand, the photographing of the shift from orange to red in these 3 photos was a tough order, so maybe you can’t even tell what I’m talking about. So on to the pictures!

Out of Fremont comes this sensible suggestion for the East Bay.

(W)eekends are best spent at the local nursery, shopping for succulents and flowering perennials to fill your garden.

I should hire the writer as our PR person.

Rebutia pygmaea

I love these tiny cacti with the big sherbert flowers that hold off until the late afternoon heat. Rebutias in general are very small plants, and this is the smallest of them. No more than an inch or so. But then they are a variable species, so over the years they have been given many names.

Dudleya cymosa

This is one of the more attractive dudleyas we’re growing. Fat green leaves with bright red edges, and these spectacular bloom displays - as much for the red color of the bloom stalks as for the pale yellow flowers.

Dudleyas were named for famed Stanford forester (and botanist) William Russell Dudley.

I wonder if I’ll ever get a plant named after me?

Cacti need about half the quantity of water required for keeping citrus and subtropical fruits such as mango.

That is interesting, as more of the world becomes arid over the coming decades. I wonder what this is all about?

Cactus Sun says a wide array of foods can be produced from cacti…without leaving any trace of thorns.

More importantly, cacti need very little water. And they are ideal for developing countries with arid climates that endure droughts…

Ahhh, very good. Plant more edible cactus, save water, and eat a hearty meal of cactus pads and cactus fruits.