Orange Cactus ID

[snake0ape]

I bought this at a los angeles nursery. They had a dozen of them at about 3 inches tall. Can anybody tell me what you know about this?

[Salazar]

Euphorbia obesa

[hegar]

I agree with Salazar. It is a Euphorbia obesa, a cactus lookalike from the Old World.

Harald

[DaveW]

They have male and female flowers, but on different plants, so if you want to set seed you need both a male and a female plant since "it takes two to tango!". As with many Euphorbia's the flowers are rather insignificant.

http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/EUPHOR ... _obesa.htm

[snake0ape]

Thanks for the ID. I think that's it. Is the long tubular shape and deep orange color just a variation?

[DaveW]

It's a pretty mature plant and looks very healthy and they do elongate in age. As to the brown/orange colour, many succulents do take on "stress colours" sometimes called "sun colours" in high light intensity dryer climates therefore this is quite normal in habitat. However we are more used to seeing boring green plants in cultivation in duller climates.

To some such colouration is part of the attractiveness of habitat plants, something which is hard to reproduce in our less extreme, lower light intensity cultivated conditions. Of course stress can go too far and damage the plant, whereas acceptable stress reverts back to normal in kinder conditions in other parts of the season.

See:-

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3030