Cactus Blog

The Yale Daily News has an article about some stolen cactus from the botanic garden, and some other stuff too – it’s a long article – but this is what caught my interest.

Marsh Botanic Garden manager Eric Larson examines ripening bananas in one of the Garden’s greenhouses. Sean Fraga/Contributing Photographer

I may not know all the banana species you might find at a botanic garden in Connecticut, but I know a carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plant species when I see one. In case you were thinking that maybe he’s reaching for a banana behind the nepenthes, click the photo for the giant version, and you can see he’s actually holding one of the pitchers of the pitcher plant.

That was fun! But wait! That’s not all the fail we have at Yale today. To the article!

Eric Larson, the manager of the Garden, said the stolen cacti were among the most valuable plants in the Garden’s collection. Eight of the plants were of the genus conophytum — quarter-sized clusters of cacti — and were located in one small tray, he said.

And there we have the classic conflation of cacti and succulents. Conophytums are in the Aizoaceae family, formerly of the Mesembryanthemaceae family, also known as “Mesembs” like the Ice Plant and Lithops, or Living Stones; but definitely not the Cactus (Cactaceaa) family. Conophytums are from South Africa, as opposed to Cacti that are from the Americas. Wow, that was geeky.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother to correct some student journalists getting some basic facts wrong, because who cares really, but it was the photo of the “Bananas” that got my attention, and so once I got started I couldn’t be stopped. Until now…

I got a venus fly trap a while ago from you guys, but it hasn’t rained here in the bay area for a while, and I’m really tired of driving to a super market paying 50 cents per gallon of distilled/ RO water. Do you have any tips for saving water? Does adding long fibered sphagnum moss work?

Michael,

We find that East Bay MUD Water is PH neutral enough to use with our carnivores… as long as we add a pinch of grape pomace to the pot every now and then… Vinegar at about a teaspoon to a gallon of water is also said to work, but I have not tried it on carnivores, just acid loving orchids.

Good luck,
Hap

And for those who were wondering where you can get this special MUD water that Hap mentions, it stands for Municipal Utility District. In other words, it comes out of our faucets, but not yours.

Sarracenia leucophylla “Tarnok”

This is the bloom of a female plant. The male bloom is less showy. These frost-hardy, sunshine-loving, bog-ready pitchers can tower up to 3 ft. tall.

I wonder why people in the cactus business have an affinity for carnivorous plants?

Drosera adelae

Here we have a fine example of a sundew from Australia. It’s practically nature’s flypaper. Sticky and attractive to flies, it digests the insects right out in the open for all to see.

I especially like the new fronds unfurling.

And those are bloom stalks, but the flowers were too tiny for me to catch on film.

Previously in our saga, the Venus Fly Trap caught a slug. And it was good. Apparently very good. Delicious even, because the slug seems to have died and become dessicated and mostly consumed by the plant.

It’s not as disgusting as the previous photo, but it’s entertaining in its own right.

Just try not to look closely. Examine how much more there is for the plant to consume….

If you like, I can post a bigger version of this, even more closeup. Or would that just be piling on?

[update: Link to our Carnivorous Plant Care instructions]