Cactus Blog

Partner and occasional co-blogger Hap got mentioned in a Houston, Texas newspaper. Here’s the full quote:

In 2005, I wrote a similar column about a cactus in an oak tree. We saw it in Fredericksburg, Texas. Back then, I spoke with Hap Hollibaugh of Cactus Jungle in Berkeley, Calif., and he said most likely the prickly pear was “simply an advantageous grower.” Seeds sometimes germinate in odd places if they find enough nutrients.

I’ve been remiss in bringing you the latest in cactus news, so here’s a classy and informative roundup of all the latest.

A woman in Jackson, Michigan sees a prickly pear cactus bloom, right in her own front yard. Good times. The newspaper as always likes to cover the phenomenon of cactus in bloom for local color.

“Before this year I could count the blooms, there were so few of them. This year I can’t keep up with it. One (petal) had 11 blooms all the way around the edge of it,” she said.

Some good news for the cactus wren.

MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Olson, the science and stewardship director at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, has helped build 14 structures out of plastic pipe, flat-headed needles and barbed wire that are meant to simulate the knotty, thorny, succulent clusters that the wrens call home.

Olson and a crew of staff and interns began erecting the structures around Irvine’s foothill country Tuesday, close to real stands of cactus inhabited by the wrens.

“Half of it is getting the birds to nest in it,” he said as he loaded the structures into trucks. “The other half is to get them to nest successfully. Between the wind and the heat and the snakes – I hope this works.”

The El Paso Times, like other newspapers in Texas, likes to remind it’s readers that you can legally buy peyote from some vendors.

A sign in front of Mauro Morales’ Rio Grande City home announces his business for everyone to see. “Peyote Dealer,” it proclaims in large block letters….The slight, 65-year-old Rio Grande City man is one of only three people in the United States — all in Starr and Webb counties — authorized to harvest and sell the psychedelic cactus.

But as overharvesting continues to threaten peyote’s growth range in Starr County, he may not have much of a business for long — and Native Americans may lose their access to a substance that drives their religion.

Shall we try one more for today? How about a touching story about a woolly cactus in Santa Cruz?

This cactus can be made from fleece or felt, with pins doubling as cactus spines

One of our occasional customers has recently been inspired by Berkeley cactus gardens to create some cactus-inspired clothing. From Women’s Wear Daily:

CITY BY THE BAY GETAWAY: New York designer Koos van den Akker has found his ideal vacation spot, allowing him to keep a daily schedule sewing his signature collage sportswear for sale in his namesake Madison Avenue boutique. His summer getaway is in San Francisco in a seventh-floor fashion school classroom at the Academy of Art University, where he’s a designer in residence for two months. It’s a post of his own making, where he’s essentially created a West Coast atelier….

Koos had just explained to a student about the textured effect created when fraying fabric into strips and some of the principles of using collage in apparel. He then turned his attention to a coat he’s sewing for his boutique — a design inspired by cacti he’s seen in dry East Bay gardens. “The bright light in the Bay Area also reflects in my work,” said Koos.

I’m feeeling inspired myself to make some clothing-inspired mixed cacti pots. I wonder what it will be?…

In today’s cactus news (actually a couple weeks ago, but then nobody has ever called me prompt) we have a cactus picture with hats from the Casa Grande Dispatch.

Photo Alan Levine

And the caption, in the newspaper, really is this:

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you boys to use the bathroom before we leave the house. OK, you’ll have to go behind that bush, but watch out for your shoes.”

I don’t know why, so stop asking me. Click through and see for yourself, and then write a letter to the editor. You have the power to stop this.

Yesterday I blogged a cactus toy in the news. So now I’m blogging another. I’ve contacted the manufacturer to see if we can carry this one at the store.

It’s a squeeky toy cactus. Presumably for dogs.

Actually, this is one we bought for Benjamin last year and he loved it.

From the Arizona Daily Star comes a news story featuring a cactus toy. It’s a balancing toy, or something. With little wooden parts.

I suppose you won’t get stuck with any cactus spines playing with this cactus, but you might get splinters. I suppose that’s inappropriate for me to say about a product I haven’t tried out. So I take it back. Not only won’t you get any spines with this cactus, you also won’t get any splinters. There. Well, that’s it for the cactus toy news for today. Check back tomorrow to see if there are any other news stories about cactus toys to report.

The night-blooming cereus flowers once a year, and, for the best performance in town, Tohono Chul Park is the place to be. The park, at 7366 N. Paseo del Norte, has more than 350 of the native cactus on its grounds, the largest collection in the world, Tohono Chul communications coordinator Glenn Nowak said.”They’re starting to open now. You can see them starting to show a little color,” Nowak said around 4:30 p.m.

Peniocereus greggii, the night-blooming cereus

Wow.

…. was started with seeds smuggled out of Nazi Germany in a matchbox. It sounds practically mythical, but that’s what Israelity tells us they learned from,

this wonderful old gardening book by Walter Frankl the other day

Here’s the quote in question.

The first importer of the many ornamental cacti you can now find at virtually every nursery in Israel today was a man called Israel Hebel, from Darmstadt in Germany.

He was a bank clerk by profession, and an amateur gardener and cacti lover by hobby.

When Hitler came to power, Hebel managed to escape Germany for Palestine, but the Nazis forced him to leave all his possessions behind. The only thing he did manage to smuggle out, however, was a matchbox full of hundreds of tiny cactus seeds.

The Hexham Courant has a list of very fine reasons why you should be planting succulents in your UK garden.

Well, not a whole list, mind you. Not even a list at all. More like one reason tucked into an article about something else entirely.

GARDEN pests are not all green and wriggly or brown and multi-legged. Some have just two legs, strong arms and an un-marked white van.

These garden pests are not after your tender succulents; they crave your top-of-the-range Hayter, your granite Japanese pagoda, and your bronze planters.

We in the North East spend almost £100m annually on our gardens – that works out at £100 for every household. And every year a percentage of us lose our carefully-selected garden additions to thieves.

One home insurer, Sainsbury’s, estimates its average payout for theft from gardens is nearly £300, and warns people to take action now.

That is something I never thought about, planting succulents because the thieves don’t want them. Good to know.

The Arizona Daily Star lets readers take over the paper and publish articles, pictures, crossword puzzles, musings, meanderings, and mappings.

Here we have a cactus in bloom submitted by Melissa Bowersock.

Apricot Glow (orange) and First Light (pink) are among the varieties of hybrid Trichocereus growing in the Bowersocks’ yard.

Suncalc tells you how much sun you’re getting. You didn’t know how much sun you were getting? Then this is the tool for you.

On the other hand, what do you mean you don’t know how much sun you’re getting? I don’t understand. Are your sunglasses too dark?

Who are the customers for this product? Gadget-mania leaves the kitchen and comes to the garden. Oy.

Yesterday I posted on a report on the loss of desert habitat in Arizona and Nevada. Today the San Francisco Chronicle looks at soon to be lost habitat in California.

The Woolyleaf ceanothus would be at risk if California’s climate becomes much hotter, a study says. Photo by Michelle Cloud-Hughes, special to the Chronicle…

If temperatures rise rapidly in California this century, up to two-thirds of the state’s native plants might lose large swaths of suitable habitat, according to a new study….

“The pace of climate change in the next 100 years poses a very serious threat to California’s native plants,” said David Ackerly, a UC Berkeley biology professor and an author of the new study published in the PLoS One, the Public Library of Science.

Scientists know that plants can respond to changing climate over thousands of years, Ackerly said. “But in less than a century, there is very little chance for plants to establish new populations and to migrate to keep up with these dramatic changes.”

What can you do? Small - stuff and big stuff.

Interesting how such beautiful pictures can really change a discussion. Usually we see pictures of bears and tree frogs and other endangered animals. But plant pictures can be just as powerful. I’m really kind of dazzled by the blue.

A cactus in Chico, CA threatens to topple over and is frightening the locals.

“I worry about it all the time. I worry about it falling over,” said Schroeder.
Because of its outlandish size, the cactus has become a land mark at Casa de Flores. Especially during the Spring time when it is in bloom.

“Oh we love it, we think it’s one of the most beautiful things we have in this park,” said resident Peggy Moak.

“Oh yes, it’s beautiful,” added Virginia Nolan.

Master Gardeners in Arizona teach classes on cactus.

Standing on a bed of mulch in his backyard, Bill Stillman examines the small green pads sprouting in clusters from the nopal cactus.

“So what I’ll do is, I’ll cut right here,” the gardener said as he began to trim off the excess growth, a gradual process that’ll eventually give his cactus a Mickey Mouse shape. “The rest I’ll leave alone for right now.”

Stillman, a master gardener with the University of Arizona’s Mohave County Cooperative Extension, is participating in a pilot gardening project through the University of Nevada-Reno, to determine whether the edible plant will take to the Mojave Desert’s arid climate.

I don’t understand this headline on an article from KTAR Phoenix.

Master gardener sees if cactus grows in Mohave Desert

Really? A “Master Gardener” doesn’t know if cacti grow in the desert? They have to go “see” if it’s true?

Maybe I should read the article and make sense of this. Maybe I should just click that little link and follow where it goes. Maybe.

Or not, hard to say.

“It appears that the owners of the bar have known for a long time about the problems caused by the Cactus… but have chosen to ignore those problems because they are making too much money,” the Osadchuks’ attorney, Charlie Rice of South Bend, said in an e-mail. “A classic case of profits over people.”

What kind of problem could a cactus be causing to bar patrons? I don’t understand.

(P)olice responded to nearly 700 calls for service at the Neon Cactus.

Oooohhhhh…… It’s not a cactus, it’s a Neon Cactus. Now I understand. I have a neon cactus T-shirt for sale at Cafepress. I wonder if it’s the same thing? My T-shirts don’t cause bar fights, at least not that I am aware of. So much confusion in Indiana. And right here too - sometimes I wonder what this blog is all about. Ah well, on to the next misunderstanding…

Geraniums are showier and more easily found in window boxes around the world, but Pelargoniums are better. Don’t believe me? Then check out the photos in the Dallas Morning News and you’ll be a convert.

In Saguaro National Park they’ve come up with such a simple and elegant solution to poaching, that one wonders why it wasn’t thought of before.

Bob Love, the chief ranger says “Saguaro National Park was set aside to preserve the saguaro cactus if we can’t protect them here where can we can we protect them.”

So he’s come up with a plan to deter plant poachers. A microchip will be implanted in the saguaros…. Each chip costs $3.50

I like it. Maybe we can also microchip my sunglasses, since they keep getting stolen too, or lost, hard to know which.

…for the environment. 4 Baby Cactus Owls were hatched in captivity. The Tucson Citizen is all over it.

A nonprofit group that rescues birds of prey in Arizona has hatched four cactus ferruginous pygmy owls, the first ones bred in captivity, a researcher for the Arizona Game & Fish Department said….

Though the new owls will remain in captivity, the long-term goal is to replenish the dwindling population of the birds in the Sonoran desert, said sanctuary director Bob Fox.

“The plan will be to get the birds released to the wild at some point,” said Fox, who cares for about 150 owls and hawks at Wild at Heart.

I’d like to add my 2 cents worth:

Woohoo!

In Texas, the like to garden in themes, and apparently now cactus is a theme with which to garden.

Gardens can do more than put food on the table or create curb appeal. For some, they’re a reflection of values…. Here are some other suggestions for themes that can be fashioned into gardens:

I think this is sad. A theme is like “French Provincial, mid-1860s” or “Light Green” or “Mow and Blow” but cactus isn’t a theme, it’s a plant family. I mean you could say that Fucshia is a theme then. Imagine the possiblities.

Roof: Top off a sturdy outbuilding with a layer of sod sown liberally with wildflowers. Or use succulents, cactus and other drought resistant plants on the roof of structures where they can be maintained and enjoyed.

Oh, I guess I was wrong. WELL, green roofs seems like a good idea. 

Nevermind.