A pair of Gymnos and Sulcos
Gymnocalycium ochoterenae vatteri -- a 2011 veteran, and so reliable about blooming from spring all the way through early fall. First bud of the year on May 4, then 3 weeks later and well underway with another bud in tow:
A flower on Memorial Day:
Here's another Gymno, and that would be my stenopleurum. One of the points of interest about this plant is the fact that it'll start setting buds late in the year. And talk about reliable! So far those late-season buds have never failed to winter over, then go into flower the following spring. Doing it for a 2nd winter season in December:
On the 1st of February, after the buds started slowly waking up in the new year (I'm sure the unusual winter heat helped):
Wow, it didn't take long for bud #1 to pop -- on 2/15...
...then in bloom a day later:
Okay, not the best effort, so let's try again. That's bud #2 finally doing something on May 4:
A very pretty bud it is, too -- on the morning of bloomage, 5/14:
For some reason, those stenopleurum flowers are shy about opening in spring. Here's the difference between day 1 and day 3:
Truth be told, the vatteri and the stenopleurum both need a lot of heat to get their flowers wide open. August is historically the hottest month of the year here in L.A., so I'll expect to give you a proper display then. I do have a Gymno that wasn't shy about its first flower of the year at the beginning of June, but I'll leave it for Part 4. In the meantime, the stenopleurum's latest flower didn't do much after it opened about 2 weeks ago, but it sure is pretty on the way out:
Next, we'll check in on my Sulcorebutia rauschii. Another one of the veteran cacti when I started the current collection in 2011, and a real success story after I turned it around with a few life-saving changes to my overall growing approach. The rauschii gave me its first-ever flower in July 2012 -- an amazingly pleasant surprise which told me the plant was on its way to recovery. Then a year ago it flowered again. Now here's what the rauschii did this spring. First buds detected at the end of April:
Getting a little bigger on 5/17:
Even bigger on the 21st:
Now it's showtime -- what a lovely Memorial Day weekend that was!
Not prolific by any means, but those vivid, colorful flowers are always welcomed on the plant bench. I'm familiar with the rauschii's behavior, so here's the sequence of events -- after the flowers come new pups. Yep, I have a couple of those to go with the 9 that came in over the summer of 2012. Unfortunately I didn't see any offsetting last year, which I'll blame on the oddly cool funk of the "summer that wasn't" (uh oh, there we go again.
). Prospects for a nice hot summer are looking favorable this year, so you can bet your bippy that I'm on the lookout for even more pups to increase my lovely rauschii's brood. Now, if it's prolific Sulco blooms you want, I can oblige...Enter Sulcorebutia aranacea courtesy of CoronaCactus, joining the collection last July. I detected its very first buds way back in January:
More buds kept coming in, then the blooming started in early March. In fact there were so many flowers this spring, I couldn't keep up with all of them, so here are just a few highlights. On March 8 as the flower derby begins:
I thought I saw what could've been my first crested flower when I showed you the Sulco callichroma longispina in Part 2. But after reviewing the aranacea pics in my archive, I believe the honors go to this one:
Still March here, on 3/16 with various stages of budding and flowering:
A nice flush going on 3/23:
Here's a beautiful singleton, all wide open and out in the sun on 4/12:
Another singleton with a crop of new buds -- and you'll see only a few of them in this pic!
We'll fast-forward to June and the last big flush on 6/5:
As we speak I'm viewing a couple of holdout flowers, but that'll be pretty much it for the year. That's what I call a fabulous showing for my lovely "monster" Sulco!
After everything you've already seen thus far, I'm saving the best for last. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the 4th and final part of the spring flower review!
