My small collection

[Pompom]

Ow woooow look at how fast it's growing! It looks like it has 3 whole new areoles! Okay sorry you can maybe make a mini greenhouse for it with a pepsi bottle which will keep it warmer. Perhaps that makes it grow faster? I usually use an incandescent lamp to keep plants warm in winter. Maybe you can use a 20-30watts lamp?
And congratulations on your new weed! You can use it as an ecofriendly made humidity sensor

Yes! Three new areoles! I can't believe it! Seriously I'm really happy the plant is finally happy. I need to think something for it next winter. And maybe to next summer too if the weather is colder than this summer and it doesn't want to grow. Mini greenhouse in a bottle sounds really great and cute actually! It's different at least. That's a point when my friends will start to think I've completely lost my mind with my plants, bottling a cactus...
Bad for the weed, I'm going to destroy it. I'm not going to risk the life of my crassula for some weed.

[Pompom]

I really hope I'll be able to hang here more now. The reason I've haven't been around is that I've been super busy. And partly because it has been so hot I just have been trying to stay human. They said that it has been the hottest summer ever measured in Finland before. For a person who never actually been for weeks in around 30 C degrees, it has been too hot. We don't have any machine for cooling the apartment down so it's been horrible inside too. And humid. Some days it felt like you can actually touch the air. Now the weather has changed dramatically: One day we had temperatures high to 30C, night after the temperatures dropped down to twenties and had stayed there. Not a nice weather, we have had violent thunderstorms and rains, two has been killed by lighting, cars has been broke since people have been stupidly trying to drive on flooding roads. It has been raining so heavily the sewer systems couldn't handle all the water and that caused the roads to flood all over Finland. Normally we have four seasons, spring summer autumn and winter. This year the spring was like a week long and then it was warm enough to be summer. Maybe the winter starts as fast as summer too?
Now the inside temperatures have dropped to 25C. And it's so cold!! I don't want to even know how cold a normal 21-22C inside temperature feels like. It took few weeks to get used to the warm weather, maybe it takes about the same time to get used to cold temps.

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And the last reason I haven't been here past few weeks is that my laptop died and I had to buy a new one. I was really, really devastated. I had made a folder for my cacti, and in there folders for the individuals. I had the pictures in my phone for a while after that but one day I removed them since they all were in my laptop. It was like 5 hours after the removal and the laptop died. Not a big deal, someone could say, but to me it's really nice to have the pictures since cacti do grow pretty slow. Without pictures it takes forever to notice the difference. Fortunately a friend of mine is good with electronics and was able to remove the hard drive and recover the pictures. So my next project is to take pictures of my plants and make comparison pictures of them. Just to show how much they have grown in this summer. I don't have beautiful pictures of flowers like everyone else but that's ok. I have comparison pictures. Almost all of the plants has grown like 2-3cm taller.

So, what's up? I've been doing fine and the plants have been doing great! Unfortunately I have to give up growing my echeverias since the winter is just way too long and dark for them. I didn't want to cut them every year. The PVN was so tall it catched a strong wind and tilted heavily. I'm not that sad since that's how you get space for new plants! I'll post a picture later of my windowsill to show how full it is (how do I get space for them for winter??? Do I have the space??) And I got new plants to fill the hole the echeverias left. I bought three baby plants, babies because they don't take that much space. I don't know yet which plant I really adore, which plant thrive in my care and environment so I try to find different species. So I got astrophytum ornatum, echinopsis subdenudata and gymnocalycium ssp. Literally I got only one new species but the gymno and echinopsis are different subspecies from what I already have. I couldn't identify the species of the gymno, but it's most likely g. mihanovichii or g. damsii/anisitsii because it has light stripe just above the areole and darker stripe just below the light stripe. It has flowerbuds but I don't know if it's strong enough to flower since it was in pretty bad shape. We'll see it later and maybe then the identifying is easier. The astrophytum needs more light, it seems it had started to grow in the store and got little etiolation? It will be just fine. And about the echinopsis. I thought it would be really easy to repot and handle since it's small and doesn't have such a long spines. How wrong I was, the spines are pretty sharp and painful!
All of the babies are around 4cm in diameter. Gymno and echinopsis are about 2cm tall and astro is about 4-5cm tall.

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[WayneByerly]

Sorry, sorry, sorry to hear about your weather problems! Yesterday's high here (which is a normal high temperature for this time of year was 88F or 31C, with near 100% humidity.


Nice pictures ... NICE plants ... Thanks for posting. I'm always up for looking at pictures of someone else's cacti.

Have been wondering where you were, and if you were okay. Glad you're back.

[Pompom]

Sorry, sorry, sorry to hear about your weather problems! Yesterday's high here (which is a normal high temperature for this time of year was 88F or 31C, with near 100% humidity.


Nice pictures ... NICE plants ... Thanks for posting. I'm always up for looking at pictures of someone else's cacti.

Have been wondering where you were, and if you were okay. Glad you're back.

Yeah, the weather has been pretty bad for the nature too. Not only in Finland but Sweden too. We've got pretty bad wild fires. The warm temperature has actually made some of the lakes so warm and oxygenless that the wildlife is suffering. One day in one lake there was hundreds of dead mussels floating around. All the dead ones were pretty big which is pretty natural since they need more oxygen than smaller ones. They all died because of the lack of oxygen. The other day the news told that in one lake hundreds of dead fish had washed ashore. The study said that most of the dead fishes were ruffles and they died because they had some kind of parasite and reduction of immunity. The immunity was down because of the warmth, algae, lack of oxygen, changes of acidity etc. And the parasite irritated their gills.

But thanks! I was wondering if you happen to have any astrophytum with hair tufts on the body? I really love this new plant visually but I'm not sure how I feel about it. It was a weird sensation to touch the body. It felt like a small and soft animal but because it's cactus it's also hard. A dead animal? I don't know, it really was a weird sensation. Am I the only one thinking like this?

I'm pretty sure I can't get any new additions for a while. My windowsill is full. There's no other window with good amount of light.

[ElieEstephane]

I'm pretty sure I can't get any new additions for a while. My windowsill is full. There's no other window with good amount of light.

Put them closer and get twice as many cacti! says the devil on the left shoulder while doing an evil laugh. Theres is always place for more and more cacti!

[Pompom]

I'm pretty sure I can't get any new additions for a while. My windowsill is full. There's no other window with good amount of light.

Put them closer and get twice as many cacti! says the devil on the left shoulder while doing an evil laugh. Theres is always place for more and more cacti!

Hush now! They are just fine now to my clumsy hands! And the windowsill is literally bending already! No more in this apartment. Or maybe one tall euphorbia fits on the floor in some corner

[Pompom]

Put them closer and get twice as many cacti! says the ELIE on the left shoulder while doing an evil laugh. Theres is always place for more and more cacti!

I have to take my words back. Thanks mate! Where would I be without you? Maybe I would be somewhere where I wouldn't be worried I my plants fit in the windowsill. But that must be pretty boring place since I didn't enjoy my time there for long.

Sooooo... I went shopping again. Partly because I was so upset with my beautiful g. baldiadum which might have a bug infestation. I bought myself a pretty gift.

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I'm so happy I went. I found so beautiful species! All of them are pretty small, about 4cm in diameter. I can't fit any larger cacti right now. I went to buy max three plants but took 4 of them. Naturally.

Mammillaria camptotricha. It has flower buds and a flower so close to open I couldn't leave it to store. It also had pretty many pups which I removed. Three of them had roots of their own so I pot them and give them to my friends.

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Mammillaria brauneana maybe? This one is so perfect and beautiful I couldn't resist.

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Gymno, I think it's g. baldiadum, correct me if I'm wrong. The color of the plant is so unnatural to me I had to have it. It's deep dark green with bluish tint.

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And finally especially Wayne, Elie... I might have great news for you! I'm not the best in identification, but I'm pretty sure that I found myself a very own Stetsonia Coryne! It has to be it. It's only 6cm tall and has 3cm spines! Of course I unpotted all my newcomers and was waiting something spectacular from the roots of this one since the visible part was so perfect. Oh yess, why not, of course it has a weird tubular root. We're going to get along so well! I love him so much already!

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[ElieEstephane]

Im glad my mind control device works
Well congratulations! They look like very healthy plants and you finally and undoubtfully found your stetsonia coryne! Mammillaria camptotricha is a very beautiful plant. I enjoy its unusual white flowers. The other mammillaria is so beautiful! Maybe one of the forms of haageana/elegans? And you are correct about the gymno too, though it could also be one of its white/yellowish flowered look alikes (not baldianum albiflorum but platense or quehlianum..) but they are all beautiful! Congrats pompom.

[teo]

For the last one - Neoraimondia herzogiana is also a possibility - they rather look alike when so small

[Pompom]

For the last one - Neoraimondia herzogiana is also a possibility - they rather look alike when so small

I'll go with that too! He's so cool!

Im glad my mind control device works
Well congratulations! They look like very healthy plants and you finally found your stetsonia coryne! Mammillaria camptotricha is a very beautiful plant. I enjoy its unusual white flowers. The other mammillaria is so beautiful! Maybe one of the forms of haageana/elegans? And you are correct about the gymno too, though it could also be one of its white/yellowish flowered look alikes (not baldianum albiflorum but platense or quehlianum..) but they are all beautiful! Congrats pompom.

Finally you completed your device. I'm proud of you. Now you need to try it with the government or something
I enjoyed the white flower too, but it was probably too scary here since it aborted the mission and decided to shut again (I know its shocked because I unpotted it and it's hanging bare rooted now).
I don't know about the other mammillaria. It's still so young. It's something beautiful, that's all I know and that's all that matters.
And I can't wait to see the gymno flowers. Whatever the species is, it's going to be awesome!

[Pompom]

I've always told how it amazes me how the plants can teach me new things.
I don't know why but I always thought that the flowers in cacti don't last long. Like they die after few hours every time. Of course that's the case in some cacti but not in every cactus. The g. anisitsii I bought earlier aborted (dried) his promising flower bud but there's still at least two more to come if everything goes well. But the m. camptotricha didn't care the repotting and this is the third day the same flower is open. First day I got the plant the flower was open but closed while I cleaned the rootsystem. I thought it was a goner but next morning the flower was open again and it closed again while I potted the the plant. Now's the morning of third day and the flower is open again! It's too cute and another is coming! I don't know how long it takes for cacti to develop and open the flower buds but I hope I don't miss it since I'm away for couple days.

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And I noticed my melocactus is growing new rib. It has been there for a while, but I didn't notice it before 'cause if I look the plant from above, a spine covers the gab. I noticed it just because I was trying to identify the species again and was calculating ribs. It's so interesting to see new things and how my plants develop.

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[WayneByerly]

Hush now! ... And the windowsill is literally bending already! No more in this apartment.

Well now that didn't last very long did it!

How many new cacti did you get? Four?

You've Got It Bad, just like the rest of us! Addiction has struck, and now you're going to have to live with it the rest of your life!

Pom pom...
Think about a short time ago when you first came to the Forum, and were so uncertain about yourself... Whether or not you belonged... How many Cacti did you have then? Now look at your window! You're one of us now ... just like all of the rest of us... How quickly did that take? Welcome to the club!!!

And think about what I said then about how great the people here are... Are you pleased with what you have found here? You think you have made real friends?

Congratulations on your 4 newest acquisitions. I especially like the Mammillaria brauneana. Another cactus to add to my wishlist! And I am SO happy for you that you have found a Stetsonia coryne! I've got two new cacti myself. Well, I guess as long as I'm here making this post I'll show them to you now.

The 1st is a Gymnocalycium shroedarianum longispinum

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And the 2nd is an Eriosyce senilis var multicolor. I left him a little room on one side either for some company or some rocks that I think look scenic. We'll see.

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[Pompom]

Well now that didn't last very long did it!

It didn't! Now I honestly have to hold back my need of getting new ones. For now my collection feels pretty complete since I don't have to look for stetsonia anymore and I have seen a flower. I'm not going to look for new cacti but if I randomly see a one from my need-to-get-list, I of course buy it.

Think about a short time ago when you first came to the Forum, and were so uncertain about yourself... Whether or not you belonged... How many Cacti did you have then? Now look at your window! You're one of us now ... just like all of the rest of us... How quickly did that take? Welcome to the club!!!

Thank you! Without everyone here it couldn't be possible for me to enlarge my collection so much. Or it would've been possible but I don't know if I enjoyed it so much and I never would've been able to pick up the species I have picked up. It's partly because of the envious feeling when you see someone else having beautiful cacti you want to get. That's how the list gets new species all the time.

And think about what I said then about how great the people here are... Are you pleased with what you have found here? You think you have made real friends?

I really love the people here! I've learned so much and not only about cacti/succulents but about people and cultures too. And that's amazing! I'm pretty sure I've made real friends here, well at least as real as people in internet can get, people here are so dependable and there's always someone who's listening (reading).

Congratulations on your 4 newest acquisitions. I especially like the Mammillaria brauneana. Another cactus to add to my wishlist! And I am SO happy for you that you have found a Stetsonia coryne! I've got two new cacti myself. Well, I guess as long as I'm here making this post I'll show them to you now.

The 1st is a Gymnocalycium shroedarianum longispinum

And the 2nd is an Eriosyce senilis var multicolor. I left him a little room on one side either for some company or some rocks that I think look scenic. We'll see.

Thank you! I'm too really happy the stetsonia is real now and not only a imagination plant!
About the mammillaria brauneana/haageana whatever, I almost left it in the store. My hands were full of the three others and it was "too perfect" looking. I've said it many times that I really love the oddities so I wasn't sure if this perfect one suits me well. It was under a table and I honestly was crouching there for minutes, walked away and went back again to look at it because it was so stunning... I'm glad I found space in my hands. Like my other mammillarias, this one should enjoy its life here also.

Oh your new additions are so cool! Congrats! I love them both since they are "rough-looking". I can't wait to see the flower of the gymno. The eriocyte looks a dangerous species with the spines it has. Like the species which you really like to touch but can't and then you cry in front of it wanting to touch it but don't want to get hurt. Btw, it looks nice in the pot!

[Pompom]

The summer is about to end here now. The weather cooled down and bees, wasps and bumblebees are about to lose their minds. Wasp queens have left the colonies and went to find a nice place to hibernate. Now the wasps are bullying the people. Same goes for the bees which are pretty clueless what to do since all the flowers are dead. They try to find last food for winter from good smelling people. Many bumblebees have lost their power and died on roads. It's still warmish, but winter is clearly coming.
It seems that here the growing season is pretty short for my plants. The ones which started to grow in spring have grown about 2.5cm (about 1 inch) taller. In fact, it seems that now's the time they really want to grow but soon there's no warmth and light for them. Next month we might have our first night freezes.

Especially my aloe really wants to grow and it's different every day. I have to rotate it every single day in order to keep it straight. I've read that aloes tend to live happiest if they are slightly root bound so maybe now it's the time the roots have finally filled the pot enough. I can't wait the next spring to see how it has grown the roots!

this pic was taken in March

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This trobidiidae patrolled the aloe for a while when it was on balcony. It was so cute since it just systematically walked through each leaf. Then it stopped and started the round again. One day it was no more there.

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I also feel bad about the stenosereus since it has finally found the will to grow and soon I have to force it to stop if it doesn't understand to do it by itself... It has now grown 6 new areoles and more is to come. You can see the light color in picture, that's how much it has grown in couple weeks, the new growth is about 0.5cm (0.2 inches) long.

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My mammillaria karwinskiana was ball shaped before the summer but has now grown taller. About 2.5cm taller.

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Mammillaria hahniana started from being disc-like and now is starting to be as tall as it is wide. I honestly was shocked when I saw the old picture compared to the new one. I thought this one didn't grow at all this summer.

last winter

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today

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The baby m. hahniana has grown about 1.5cm (from 6.5 cm mark to 8cm mark).

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One reason why I don't like "perfect" cacti is because they can look same for a long time, being just slightly bigger versions of themselves. That goes with the melo which I know has been growing for about 3-4 months now but it really doesn't seem different from the day I bought it. It doesn't have any indicator which I can use to compare it. I marked aeroles which I'm pretty sure are more or less new growth since I've checked it daily and seen new growth to get older (it does have small scarring close to the soil level so it has been in the same position all the time). But I can't be sure since the whole plant is just the same looking. That's why I'm pretty glad it started to divide the rib. Now I have a growth indicator. Of course I would've counted the aeroles when I bought it, taken some measurements etc but I didn't.

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[Buffgraphy]

So many photos and love for cactus . Many good information! Nice blog!