Cactus Blog

Benjamin and Jason are famous! Paula Wirth has posted their photos on her flickriver stream.

Sutera cordata “Snowflake” is really the first herbaceous groundcover we’ve carried. Pretty little flowers, good in containers, hanging baskets, and even indoors! Regular watering is nice, but it is actually quite heat resistant and can be ignored for awhile once established.

Yes, we’re expanding our selection once again; more flowering perennials in smaller, quart and liter sizes.

It’s the end of a Bay Area landmark.

In this case, we’re talking about a cactus chandelier. Only on twitpic. By iizLiz

My backyard aloe is in full bloom. Plus, the Bambusa “Alphonse Karr” is filling in nicely.

Aloe plicatilis

Oxalis vulcanicola “Coppertones” is a vibrantly colored, wide-splayed cultivar of a tight clumping species. We’ve grown them in both little quart pots and in hanging baskets. The quarts have been, by far, the more popular.

For some reason, hanging baskets are not selling well this spring. And it is spring! What a busy weekend we had.

Oh my g-d these are cute. I don’t read German, so I don’t know if these are one person’s personal stock of knit cactus, or if they’re for sale somewhere, or even what they’re for.

Wow!

A remarkable relationship between a shrew and a Montane Pitcher, from the Guardian.

Oy, don’t bother watching this terrible episode from Spike TV.

You can blame Captured! By Robots for sending us this.

Euphorbia amygdaloides “Purpurea”

The foliage changes color throughout the year: Green in spring, deep burgundy in summer, ruby-purple in fall. Lime-green bloom sprays start showing up in spring and last through the summer.

And thus concludes Spurge Week at the CactusBlog.

You know I am often amazed what one can find on the web. Here we have a balloon cactus.

Now what does this mean? I mean, you know, like, 500 years ago someone in Rome first got a sample of a cactus from an explorer who had recently returned from the Americas. Maybe from Columbus himself. And now look what happens; google, twitter, and balloon cactuses. Oh my.

An Australian thriller called “Cactus”

Finally, Dogs 101 has done a segment on whippets, and it goes by fast…

Unfortunately they don’t let you embed the video, so you’ll have to click the link.

And an older Animal Planet video on whippets from Breed All About It.

@iamdianthus http://twitpic.com/184vqk – @cactusjungle new plants from yesterday!

And if we follow the link, we find out that the new plants include an Echeveria “Metallica” and a Graptoveria “Debbie” (I think).

Euphorbia amygdaloides v. robbiae

These are a larger, greener leaf than a lot of the other spurges we carry. But the blooms are just starting to open, so that’s very exciting. They’ll be green, or slightly yellow.

These are a low growing spurge – only 18″, but they do send out a slow spreading rhizome. Easy to keep contained but will form a dense, lush fabric of leafy goodness.

We mix our own cactus soil, designed for everyone who lives other than in the desert, so there’s no sand in it at all, which is a good ingredient if you live in the desert, but we don’t. One of our regulars asked a question about the ingredients in our mix.

Hi Hap,

I was looking at your pre-mixed soil for sale (the one that’s recommended for a very fast draining soil for cacti); I noticed that there is a percentage of COIR in the mix. Doesn’t that retain moisture, thus, creating a less desirable draining vehicle. Maybe it has some other attributes that justifies it’s addition to the mix…

Thanks,
Faraz

Now, I would answer this differently than Hap, who does a good job of just getting down to basics. I would have said something along the lines of Yes, it does hold some moisture – all plants need some moisture… But that would have been rude of me, so it’s a good thing Hap answered instead.

Faraz,

Our soil mix is mostly lava and pumice, the organic materials are coir and composted rice-hulls. Both of them are nice and rot resistant, both being the seed-husks of water transported seeds, means they are filled with natural anti-fungal properties, which leads to long term soil stability and healthy plants. Coir and rice-hulls can last eight to ten years in potting soil. Commonly used peat only lasts about two to three years, and has a host of other drawbacks as well…. The coir and rice-hulls are both “long fiber”, so they do hold moisture, but not too much. They also “bond” nutrients well, so the slow release complex organic fertilizer we add has a good life span in the soil mix.

Hap

Euphorbia “Redwing” is a hybrid spurge, as if you didn’t know that. It is very similar to Euphorbia characias, but for the red bloom structures. I wonder what those are called?

And it is hybridized from… E. amygdaloides x E. martinii, which we learned yesterday is a hybrid from E. amygdaloides and E. characias. Very interesting.

The unique characteristic of this variety is the red flower stems, which were green last fall, but turn bright red in late winter, even before the profusion of chartreuse or as some would say sulfur-yellow blooms in spring. I had to get down on the ground to capture the foliage under those all-encompassing blooms. These turn out to be quite attractive to bees. Yay!

Mr. Subjunctive links to a site with some startlingly close-up photos of cactus.

Did I mention the startle factor?

It’s called A Closeup Look at Some Members of the Cactus Family, or some such thing. And it’s by a Canadian who goes by Brian Johnston, according to the site. Did I mention how cool it is?

Jenny at J Peterson Blog has a tree trunk photo. Oh, and it’s covered in caterpillars. Oh Nos! I’ll bet they’ve already stripped those leaves bare.

Euphorbia x martinii – I don’t know what this is a cross between, so let me look it up. As it is there are dozens of cultivars of this hybrid. I’ll bet it’s one of the German hybrids. Well, the answer is as simple as it appears: E. amygdaloides x E. characias. Now you know.

Science!