Armen's Collection 2015

[Armen Tsirunyan]

So I have decided to systematize my photos a little bit and have just finished going through the 2015 photos - the year I started growing cacti.

Basically, what I had at the beginning was about 20 plants which I had had in my childhood and had COMPLETELY neglected for more than 10 or 15 years for reasons which I don't quite remember. In late 2014 I had a psychedelic experience of sorts (no, it wasn't a peyote ) which reminded me that I love cacti and should resume growing them, which I have been doing since, to my great satisfaction. Other than that, during 2015 I bought several new plants and, what is most important, did my first sowing of seeds!

I learnt a lot during this year. I learnt how to repot cacti properly. I learned how (not) to water them. I learned a little bit about photography (as you can see, the learning was a bit too slow ). While making my seedlings hatchery, I learned some about electrical engineering. That's why I love this hobby - you learn so much and then get rewarded by beautiful flowers

OK, so here are some of the photographs from the beginning of my journey. Hopefully you will enjoy them and maybe even learn something new

[Armen Tsirunyan]

The first two months of 2015 I was occupied solely by my first sowing of cactus seeds. Here are some random photos of admittedly quite low quality (I will have bought my camera a couple of months later

I sowed 24 species in 24 pots in 12 baggies:

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Gymnocalycium baldianum at 3 weeks:

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Mammillaria fraileana at 3 weeks:

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This one does not require naming, I am sure A.A. at 3 weeks

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A very bad close-up attempt (my first, though). Mammillaria carnea at 4 weeks

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Wilcoxia kroinleinii (which the scientific community tends to call Echinocereus poselgeri now), at 4 weeks. The seedlings are very dark, not green and are starting to grow vertically. One of the seedlings is double-headed. All of them have survived to this day

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[Armen Tsirunyan]

In march I took the first pictures of my old plants and started to investigate what they are. They don't look do dead as you'd expect from a plant that had not been properly watered for 10 years, do they? Some of them ended up even blooming:

Rebutia heliosa. You can witness the neglect by the state of the pot

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Mammillaria sp. (to this day, this Mamm has not flowered and I have no idea which one it is)

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Rebutia neocumingii

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A couple of Astrophytums:

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And finally, my favorite, M. lasiacantha, to my great joy and surprise, with a ring of flower buds

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In about two weeks, I was in for a treat. What a beautiful plant! Unfortunately, it perished early this year (2017) - rotted from the inside. Ah well

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My dubious attempt at removing the photo background and replacing it with a uniform color

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In the meantime, my newly sown seedlings continued to grow:

Wilcoxia kroenleinii at 7 weeks, now with much longer and fluffier heads:

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A.A. at 7 weeks. As you can see, I am getting a little bit better at aiming the camera without shaking it too much . The seedlings have developes rudimentary spines that will later fall off.

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Mammillaria lasiacantha at 7 weeks.

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Mammillaria carnea at 7 weeks

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The fluffy turbinicarpus valdezianus seedlings, at 7

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Mammillaria parkinssonii at 9 weeks, already having developed many of the features of its adult self:

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Turbinicarpus schmiedickeanus klinkerianus at 9 weeks, developing the first "real" spines:

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Rebutia deminuta albiareolata at 9 weeks, growing among moss, which proved completely harmless to the seedlings:

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[Armen Tsirunyan]

April started with two almost-dead Mammillaria proliferas flowering. So resilient of them

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The Rebutia heliosa started showing buds:

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One of the buds seems to emerge from under the ground

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And, sure enough, in a couple of weeks, voila:

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In the meantime, the seedlings have been growing and growing:

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Wilcoxia kroenleinii, at 3 months, getting longer and longer:

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Mammillaria parkinssonii, at 3 months, looking like autumn leaves (the coloring was supposedly due to too much light but proved to be benign):

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Echinopsis ancistrophora, at 3 months, being repotted for the first time:

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A mutant seedling of Stenocactus crispatus. This abnormal look later smoothed out and the seedling proceeded to live and look like the other normal seedlings:

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Mammillaria bocasana, at 3 months, developing the characteristic hairs:

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Turbinicarpus schmiedickeanus klinkerianus, with the scary looking spines on the tender seedling

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Parodia weberiana seedlings, the greenest among them all

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Gymocalycium ambatoense, the only one to germinate, with beautiful baby snowflaky spines

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[toadstar]

This one does not require naming, I am sure A.A. at 3 weeks

Very nice! What is it?