My Cacti 2014

[hegar]

Well, after a long pause the time is here once again to start posting pictures of my cactus plants.
Yesterday, the first cactus did flower. I did take a few images, which I will post tomorrow. I was busy, weeding one of the plantings and afterwards I did give all my cacti the first drink, made up of water and vinegar, in order to reduce the pH of the tap water.
The weed I had to get rid of is called scorpionweed (Phacelia sp.). I did not know what it was and how tall it would grow at first, so I left the plants in place. Then they started to flower - not too ugly blossoms - and the bees really liked visiting them. I felt bad about pulling most of them out and depriving the bees of nectar. It was easy to yank them out of the ground (taproot), but the stems and leaves were sticky and had a funny smell. I did leave a few plants, so I can harvest some seed and plant it somewhere else, where it will not cover up the cacti.
Here are a few before and after pictures.

[CactusFanDan]

Looking good!

[hegar]

Here are images of the first cactus to go into bloom. Our local cactus club members call this plant "Early Bloomer". Its scientific name is Echinomastus intertextus. I do love the pink pistil. While my plant flowered just last Saturday, during a field trip to the west side of the Franklin Mountains, which divide our city, I saw a plant in the wild that was already blooming on February 22nd.
I live on the east side of town and everything seems to happen about one month later than for the folks on the west side.
OK, here are the first pictures of one of my cacti in the flowering mode. I only have one of these plants, which are native here.
The cactus has five flower buds, but two of them still have not opened up. So it looks, like three flowers open together will be as good as it goes.


Harald

[SDR]

Beautiful! Thanks!

[hegar]

Thank you, Dan and Stephen for your short, but nice comments. It makes me happy to know, that some forum members do enjoy looking at the digital images of my plants.
This evening - when I returned home from work - I was surprised to see yet another cactus blossom. It was the first flower on one of my claret cup cacti. The scientific name for this plant is Echinocereus coccineus. Unusual about this species is, that the blossom will stay open day and night for most likely a week or more. Most of the plants in my collection will only flower one or two days and if the light conditions are not good enough the blossom does not even fully open,. That is rarely the case though, because we generally do have very bright sunlight and very few days of rain per year.
Image 1d was taken just a few minutes ago at 21:18 h and I needed to use the flashlight to allow the camera to focus!

Harald

[keith]

Great outdoor cactus beds !! Echinomastus intertextus never been able to keep it alive more than a year or 2 - California and Phoenix the roots die

[hegar]

Thank you for your kind comments, Keith. I too do have a hard time keeping Echinomastus intertextus plants alive. I did have a nice specimen a few years back and it too had five blossoms - all open on the same day. The next year the plant died! I was told, that E. intertextus should not be planted too deeply. So I went ahead and planted the cactus, which was one that had been salvaged ("rescued") locally, because a school was going to be built where it used to grow, by just having the base touch the soil and then mounting pebbles around it, in order to stabilize it and keep it from falling over. It did look terrible for quite some time and I thought, that it was going to cactus heaven. Then, to my great surprise, it sprung to live and flowered last year and this year too.
My cactus club members do tell me, that this species is short lived for them too.

Well, when I arrived from work, shortly after 6:30 p.m. I found one blossom open on a plant that most likely originated in the Orogrande, NM area. It is a naturally occurring hybrid. The parentage probably is E. coccineus x E. dasyacanthus. I shall try to once again go on the yearly Orogrande field trip and will post images once again.
The blossom on this specific plant is a little bit smaller than what is present on the claret cup that flowered yesterday.

Harald

[Mark]

Your plants look great Harald! I also have some of those weeds growing around here. I just left them for the bugs.



Mark

[hegar]

Hello Mark,
thank you for your comment. I really do appreciate it.
Because there were no new blossoms to photograph, I went ahead and took a few pictures of the two Echinocereus coccineus plants that are in flower. As you can see, the possibly "purebred" E. coccineus added one more flower, while the hybrid version added six of them and is still not finished. Because I do have more E. coccineus plants, there will be additional images, especially, if I either have unusual flower colors to show or because of the number of blossoms.
Well, here are the photos I shot today. The last two were taken of the E. coccineus hybrid about 7:10 p.m. and do not have the bright sun on them.

Harald

[hegar]

Before I go and do a few things that need to be done I want to place two images on this site. They do show a flowering Escobaria tuberculosa, if I am not mistaken. The blossom is not a very pretty one, but as far as I can tell, the plant may flower again in August.

Harald

[Ralf]

Really nice, Harald! My outdoor cacti show its first buds but it takes some weeks more till they flower.

[Arjen]

lovely flowers harald!

[hegar]

Thank you very much for your kind comments, Ralf and Arjen. This year is a little different from the preceding ones. Some plants flower profusely, others less than usual and yet others not at all or for the first time.
Today I found several genera/species in bloom. Here are the images I took of them:
1. Ancistrocactus (Glandulicactus) uncinatus, the cat claw cactus, doing better than ever before.
2. Escobaria sneedii ssp. leei, a small cactus with character.
3. The native "brother" of the last cactus Escobaria tuberculosa (corn cob cactus), flowering the second or third time this year.
4. A hybrid plant of the "claret cup" Echinocereus x roetteri with a pink flower and
5. Last, but not least, the gorgeous Arizona rainbow, Echinocereus pectinatus. Unfortunatley only four blossoms on one plant, but those flowers are huge and nicely colored.
I am also showing a prickly pear cactus that is going to flower, but it is still holding on to the fruit it produced last year. I have no idea, what the species of this plant is. It is a low-growing plant and the flowers are yellow; a typical Opuntia.

Harald

[hegar]

Well, yesterday and today a few additional plants went into bloom. Yesterday, the first prickly pear cacti, Opuntia rufida and Opuntia violacea, both very floriferous species had their first blossoms. I shall post additional images, once they are covered with blooms.
Today, I noticed, that the "New Mexico Rainbow Cactus", Echinocereus viridiflorus var. chloranthus had a few open flowers. Also, an additional hybrid claret cup (Echinocereus coccineus var. rosei hybrid flowered for the first time.
Two very pretty cacti also had their first blossom open. Those are the "Texas Rainbow Cactus" (Echinocereus dasyacanthus), with its huge yellow/white blossoms with green throats, and the Fendler's Hedgehog (Echinocereus fendleri), which prodces a large blossom with a very deep pink, almost burgundy or light purple flower. Here they are now:

Harald

[Arjen]

wow, great show harald! I especially love the echinocereus flowers