Echinomastus seedlings

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peterb
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Echinomastus seedlings

Post by peterb »

I sowed several lots of seed this year as a first step toward a three-fold project. One part is to continue to fine tune cultivation practice for AZ Echinomastus so that they might be more widely available for growers. The second is to create some stock plants if possible to get seed from every year (someday). The third is to experiment with small scale reintroduction of acunensis and erectocentrus in particular. I've been in informal contact with private landowners and Fish and Wildlife and we might be ready to try the reintro project in about 4 years.

anyway, spome photos of 3 week olds, already out of the box and in a few hours of direct sun a day on a windowsill:

(first, Echinocactus xeranthemoides from Meadview, habitat seed):
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johnsonii lutescens:
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erectocentrus acunensis:
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erectocentrus:
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intertextus from Santa Cruz County:
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A couple of "exotics," mariposensis and durangensis, MG seed:
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peterb
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iann
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Post by iann »

My E. xeranthemoides are in the propagator but are still a little smaller and blacker than your plants :)

Have you read Elton Roberts' thoughts on growing Echinomastus? In particular the Pediocactus-like fear of early summer water?
--ian
peterb
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Post by peterb »

Yes, Roberts has offered some advice of great interest regarding watering times for the genus. Chris (Birdguy) also mentioned the withholding of water from April-June (recommended by Elton for tetrancistra, polycephalus and other Mojave plants as well). I'll be checking that out this year with some johnsonii, erectocentrus, acunensis that I have in pots. It is the dry season both here and in the Mojave; April-June absolutely the most dry time of year. Interesting.

As I said before, my reservation with this regimen would be if the plants were *also* bone dry all winter, especially during a long temperate winter dormancy. I think the very dry early summer would work great for plants that have had periodic soaking winter rains, which they do get in habitat.

peterb
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iann
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Post by iann »

Echinomastus run eastwards through New Mexico and Texas where there might or might not be much winter rain. Its a tricky issue here whether this sort of plant can be watered much or at all after winter but before April. There really isn't a space in there but a time to water would have to be found if the plants were to be baked dry until July or August. I'm experimenting to see if its safe to water in February or March. Pediocactus love it even when nights are still freezing, so maybe other plants can take some a little later and a little lighter but before most cacti would be watered.
--ian
peterb
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Post by peterb »

The more eastern species are Chihuahuan, in which case they are dry through winter and then subject to spring rains and earlier soaking thunderstorms. November through March are the real dry months in that region, with moisture mounting from April-June. Many of the more eastern locations get a lot more rain overall than the johnsonii locations, also. It seems in cultivation, the southeastern AZ/NM/TX plants respond well to more water as long as they are relatively dry and cold over the winter.

I'll be curious to hear how your plants respond to the earlier, "Pediocactus-style" watering in Britain.

peterb
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Lewis_cacti
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Post by Lewis_cacti »

i know you may consider this cheating or non-puristic but maybe you could graft a few seedlings to speed their growth time to maturity (by many many times!) so you can use them as stock plants for seed production much quicker. Also eliminates the difficulty of culture!
iann
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Post by iann »

I think your characterisation of the Chihuahuan desert is wrong. Winters are drier than further west and so there is no pronounced spring dry season, but spring is still the driest season and serious summer rains don't start until June at the earliest, more typically July. May and June are considered hot dry months.

There is no experiment with Pediocactus themselves. On their own roots they are happy to receive water in February while there are still hard freezes, inflate like a balloon by March, and by April or May they are no longer interested. Many people don't follow this regime, but then most people grow grafted plants or consider Pediocactus to be impossible :)

Its not hard to experiment wildly on E. polycephalus since it is considered impossible to grow on its own roots in this country. If some "stupid" watering practice such as water in March but not from April to July does the trick then that will be great :roll:
--ian
peterb
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Post by peterb »

I double checked the average precipitation amounts at weather.com to see the increasing precipitation from April onward for Marathon, Terlingua, El Paso. Having lived on the edge of the Chihuahuan I wondered if maybe I had hallucinated all those spring rains! :-)

Winter is the driest season (dividing total precip by length of time) and it starts to get wet in mid to late April. The admittedly puny amounts of spring rain are it seems very important triggers for a lot of Chihuahuan cacti. Even though the amounts are low, they are still greater than the dry winter months. These "waking rains" in combination with climbing temps are a real switch in spring. This is in contrast to Mojave cacti which I've seen flower after nearly three months with no rain whatsoever. (and the Mojave/Sonoran wildflowers rush to flower in late Feb/early March, before the rains stop).

Marathon: total average rainfall, Nov-March: 1.9 inches. April: .61; May: 1.7; June: 1.91

Terlingua: total average rainfall, Nov-March: 1.23 inches. April: .29; May: .95; June: 1.44

El Paso: total average rainfall, Nov.-April: 2.5 inches. May: .4; June: .9

So especially the habitats of Echinomastus warnockii and mariposensis experience a dry, "cold" winter and then in a relatively short time (about 8-10 weeks leading up to summer rains) get about as much rain (or even twice as much) as they did all winter. Farther west near El Paso it does look like spring is more dry, but not the driest season, compared with 5 months of relative dryness through winter.

The point of all this data crunching is to highlight a possible important difference in cultivation. However, it could just as well be true that mimicking habitat conditions is fruitless anyway! I think the details really only come under consideration for plants we think of as "difficult." Perhaps in these cases some duplication of unusual habitat conditions will make a difficult plant "easy." This is the hope. As you say, some "stupid" thing like not watering polycephalus in "late" spring, when it would seem intuitively obvious they should be watered. Poor things, it's already nearly 100F every day!

peterb
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mendel
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Post by mendel »

Peterb is correct, May and June are the wettest months in the CDR in my experiances of traveling in that area for many years. This seems to be particularly true in the Big bend area, and Davis and Guadelope mountains.

It rains in Terlinqua? Its probably just blow off from storms in the Chisos Mountains or the Sierra del Carmen..... :lol:
Southeast Colorado, zone 6b
iann
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Post by iann »

May and June are the wettest months in the CDR in my experiances
Which just goes to show how wrong a limited number of observations can be!

I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate, Peter. Did you deliberately present the data to hide the fact that April is the driest month throughout most of the region? Only in the most western fringes is March the driest month. And that June is the hottest month? And that July, August, and September all have much more rain than any other month, both in total precipitation and number of rain events?

If you want to call June spring and claim that it has rain then be my guest, but I don't think it changes the fact that there is a significant period of heat before the first major rains arrive. Remember that half an inch of rain in January is a useful drink, half an inch of rain in June barely washes the dust off ;) Winter rains are also lighter and occur more frequently. El Paso has more rainy days in January than June and averages less than one rain event per month in March, April, and May.

So some of the Echinomastus species are found in the Big Bend area with heavy rain arriving a month or more earlier than California and eastern Arizona. Do these species behave differently? Are they easier or harder? I have no clue. Why are they so different from the no-brainer Echinocereus species found in the same areas? Do they only go into water-hating mode above a certain temperature? That is believable, but again certain plants seem to have a water-hating phase at certain times regardless of the temperature, while others don't.
--ian
peterb
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Post by peterb »

No, I just lifted the data as is from weather.com. I think they get their data from the National Weather Service. Why the NWS would want to make April-June look wetter than it really is in the CDR is a great question! :-)

I'm generally interested in significant climate differences between the Chihuahuan desert region to the east and the Sonoran/Mojave to the west. It seems to me that April-June are the driest months in the Sonoran and Mojave and the winter season, taken as an aggregate, is the driest season in the Chihuahuan. It does seem significant to me that in the more western deserts (Sonoran/Mojave) the spigot pretty much just turns off at the end of February or March and doesn't go back on until the summer rains. In the Chihuahuan, the water seems to start coming on in April and gradually ramp up to the peak of summer rains.

I've also been meaning to throw in the observation that most cold Chihuahuan desert plants will not go into growth no matter how much moisture they get over the winter, if it stays on the cold side. Sonoran/Mojave plants will put on winter growth with water, even if the temps are fairly cold (admittedly, usually not quite as cold, by about 10F, as the Chihuahuan temps).

Anyway, I'm maybe blind as a Mexican brown bat, but I don't see figures showing April as the driest month in the CDR.

Re: E. mariposensis and warnockii: Brack and others treat these in ye olde style...cold, dry and dormant over the winter, watering after the first warm days of spring and regularly through the summer highs, tapering off through fall.

peterb
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birdguy34
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Post by birdguy34 »

Great looking seedlings. Such great germination on the johnsonii lutescens, sure wish I could get that many to sprout on the many seeds I planted of regular johnsonii.
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CoronaCactus
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Post by CoronaCactus »

Great seedlings Peter!

That sounds like quite the ambitious venture! Let me know if i may be of any assistance with it!
peterb
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Post by peterb »

Thanks Darryl. For one thing, there's no way I can grow all these guys on beyond about 2 years old!

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CoronaCactus
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Post by CoronaCactus »

No worries, i have lots of land... it's building all the structures to put them in! 2 years is about enough time... :lol:
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