My Cacti 2015

[Mark]

Maybe next year! You have lots of buds coming along. Please do post pictures. I need to upload mine. The Weather has been unusual. It was very chilly recently. How was the garden tour? Was there a lot of people? I was unable to attend.

I hope they have a good selection of cacti at Florafest. I know that place high desert? Not sure of the name has some cacti but not the biggest selection. At least last time I was there, there wasn't that many cacti.

I love E. fendleri, such great color and flowers!

Mark

[hegar]

Hello Mark,
the garden tour was pretty successful, as far as I can tell. There were many visitors and I was kept busy showing them the plants.
I do not know, if financially the club did better this year than last, because I do not know yet how much profit the cacti that were on sale brought, neither do I know, how much money was collected for entrance fees.
You mention "High Desert" and the selection of cacti there. I received an e-mail yesterday, telling me, that that place had a number of cacti brought in from Arizona. It looks though, like most of them are columnar big type plants.
I too hope, that something special will be available at the FloraFest. I shall try to get there as early as possible on the first day of sale.
Also, Peter does have some plants left over from the garden tour sale and I am going to check, if there are any that are of interest to me.

Harald

[hegar]

Today I took a number of digital images of various cacti that were flowering.
First I want to show you the cactus bed, where most of the plants were blooming.
I was also able to get a few better shots of the "Glory or Pride of Texas" Thelocactus bicolor and Fendler's hedgehog (Echinocereus fendleri). Another Echinocereus that was still flowering is E. coahuilense. The Texas Rainbow cacti (Echinocereus dasyacanthus) are also showing their splendor, as was the Arizona Rainbow Echinocereus pectinatus. The Ancistrocactus uncinatus (Cat's Claw cactus) was also trying to flower, but the bud would not open enough. Perhaps tomorrow I will have a better picture. Also, the flower of the Turbinicarpus valdezianus did not measure up to my expectations, but it did bloom and will do so again later in the season.
Another group of cacti, that will be in spectacular bloom are the prickly pear members. The first flowers open were the Opuntia azurea, Opuntia macrocentra, and Opuntia violacea.

Harald

[hegar]

The sun came out a bit and so I went ahead and took two additional images.

The first one is that of the prickly pear member Opuntia violacea. It is a terrific bloomer and will give me a sea of flowers within the next few days. Unfortunately, it also grows very rapidly and I am constantly having to cut it back. I should consider eating both the fruit it produces and the stem segments (pads). LOL
The second image shows Ancistrocactus uncinatus (cat claw cactus), which does have unusually colored blossoms. Because of the long spines perhaps, these do not open up fully. Another reason could be, that the cactus is not planted in full sun.

Harald

[fanaticactus]

What a gorgeous cactus garden! Great color and excellent use of space. Love it!

[hegar]

Thank you for your accolades, fanaticactus. Overall, I am happy with this year's flower production and a good number of nice plants will be featured still.
Because we did have a few weeks with very unpredictable and varied weather, I was not able to get some plants photographed well, because their flowers would either not open up when I was home or stubbornly decided to remain almost closed, never allowing me to see inside them.
One plant that did open its buds for me to see inside the blossom was the Ancistrocactus uncinatus. Another, that I was not able to photograph with a fully open flower turned out to be my only flowering-size Astrophytum capricorne.
The smaller Thelocactus bicolor outdid its larger brother and produced three nice blossoms.
Because of spring rains, one of my Eagle Claw (Echinocactus horizonthalonius) went into bloom. Usually, these plants will not flower until summer, when we have most of the rainfall in the Chihuahuan Desert.
Another group of cacti, that are "flowering their heads off" right now are the Opuntia spp. (prickly pear) cacti. While they do produce large and plentiful flowers, most of my plants grow way too fast and constantly need to be thinned out. It is getting hard to find anybody who will take them off my hands. However, some of the prickly pear members stay small, but are still pretty.
What looks to me like a hybrid claret cup also bloomed. It is kind of late doing so, because it was shaded by those prickly pears.
Another cactus that is a dependable bloomer and flowers more than once a year is Echinocereus reichenbachii.
Also, the "purple pentalophus" (Echinocereus pentalophus) did a great floral display. The first image was taken by my son, because by the time I returned from work the blossoms would have been in the process of closing.
Yet another "claret cup" went into bloom. This one is called Echinocereus triglochidiatus.
One of my plants, which had been named Echinocereus leucanthus (syn.: Wilcoxia alba) produced flower buds for the first time this year. However, the blossoms did not turn out to be white, but they were pink. So my plant is an E. poselgeri. I am not too upset about this mix-up by the nursery though.
The last flowering cactus I want to present today is one of my favorites. It produces a ton of flowers until frost and the blossoms are a very saturated knock-out red. The plant is named Gymnocalycium baldianum. It is easy to grow and doing well in my yard.
I will most likely post another image of this cactus, once I see more blossoms open.

Harald

[Minime8484]

Wow! Amazing plants, flowers, and photos! I'm just drooling over them.
That E. poselgeri is especially cool!

[hegar]

Thank you for your nice response, Minime8484.
You are right, that Echinocereus poselgeri is a nice plant and I am happy to have been able to purchase it. Because its stem is so thin, it almost looks like a conventional cut flower.

Harald

[fanaticactus]

Again, the three "B"s--Big, Bright and Beautiful--all of them!! I've had several G. baldianum, but they don't seem to last for more than two seasons. They're common enough to find so I'll get more. But their red is one of the most brilliant reds I know of.

[hegar]

Thanks for your input, fanaticactus. I shall photograph that Gymnocalycium baldianum, once it has a lot of flowers that are wide open.
I have killed one plant of this species thus far, but the second one I planted in a slightly different location is truly thriving. It has grown to a nice size and you can see on the images, that it does have a good number of flower buds. Sometimes, the spot where the cactus is grown will determine, whether or not it does well or dies. I do have a very well draining kind of soil, which I amend with coarse sand from the arroyos (dry creeks), top with larger pebbles and surround with yet larger rocks.

Here are a few images of today's flowering cactus group.
First, a small (less than 1 foot tall) prickly pear, which produces many blossoms.
Next two images of Opuntia microdasys, which is also a small member of the prickly pear cacti.
Also, I do have two more images of a nice Echinocereus plant, which rewards the grower with repeat blooming and flowers at a very early age (see previous images of my plant grown from seed about two years ago).
And finally, a plant that is flowering for the first time. It produced only one blossom, but that is a nice-looking one.
Hopefully, it will have more flower buds next year. The name of the plant is Echinocereus engelmannii. It is a common species of Echinocereus.

Moat likely, tomorrow there will be additional pictures. Several of the cacti do have large flower buds, which should open any day now.

Harald

[fanaticactus]

All I can say is you've clearly illustrated the difference between the Texas and the Vermont climates!!

[hegar]

Well, fanaticactus, things are not perfect here either, but I cannot complain.
We have had cloudy weather lately, which interferes with the blossoms opening fully. As a result, I am not getting the pictures taken that I had hoped for. The hot and dry weather - which is what it normally should be this time of the year - helps the flowers to open to their maximum size.

Harald

[fanaticactus]

I completely understand how lack of strong sun on an otherwise 'perfect' day can be less than ideal for viewing flowers at their best. It's happened to everyone, I guess. That one particular day when that one special flower should open turns out to be cloudy, and the chance to see the bloom in its full glory is gone. Well, here's to a bare minimum of those days and bright sunshine for all us cactus lovers!

[hegar]

I should call myself lucky for having as many sunny days as do occur here in the "Sun City" of El Paso TX.
I grew up in northern Germany and what looks here like a cool spring day is considered a summer day over there.
Well, today it was once again more sunny than cloudy and my son was able to take a few digital images of three flowering cacti. I spotted a fourth one, when I returned from work shortly before 7 p.m.
My camera does have both, a macro and supermacro feature, which allows me to get very close for stunning images of the blossoms. If I cannot get close to the subject, I can zoom optically to a maximum of 20x. Some of those pictures also turned out fine. My cacti are all a bit crowded, which at times force me to take the zoom instead of the macro setting.

The first image is of a plant, that is flowering for the first time. It was sold to me as Echinocereus coahuilense. To me it looks like E. pectinatus and I may well be that plant species.
The next two images are of a dependable bloomer. I did miss the first two blossoms and almost the last one too.
The color of the large flower is a very light pink. The plant's name is Echinocereus perbellus.

Harald

[hegar]

Here are a few more photos of cacti that are flowering.
The first image is that of a Thelocactus rinconensis. I did miss the flower being fully open, but it looks like that is all I am going to have this year.
The second and third images show a small cactus I only purchased on April 25th. With all those wooly spines at the top, I did not even realize, that the plant did have a flower bud. Well, it did bloom. What a surprise! . The name of that plant is Turbinicarpus pseudomacrochele.
Next is an odd cactus, which I bought about a year ago. It is, as you can see, a thin-stemmed plant. Its name is Pterocactus tuberosus.
Another plant that flowered is a subspecies of the Fendler's hedgehog, Echinocereus fendleri ssp. kuenzleri. Just like the regular E. fendleri, it does have a lovely blossom.
The last is a plant shown earlier. However, now it does have many blossoms. Its name is Gymnocalycium baldianum.
This plant will keep producing flowers until the fall months.

Harald