Piante grasse cactus spine

Tag: curiosity

Echinopsis Haku-jo, the cactus with mysterious origins: it does not exist in nature but it’s very popular on the market

It’s a bit like that shy and reserved distant relative: everyone in the family knows he exists, but little or nothing is known about him, or his history. Those who grow cacti and succulent plants, those who are used to attending market-exhibitions of succulent plants, those who hang out in well-stocked nurseries, have certainly observed more than one specimen. Many enthusiasts have one or more specimens in their cacti collection. Yet, very little is known about this Echinopsis Haku-jo. In the many texts dedicated to cacti (not only in Italian) the plant often appears in photographs but the information is always scarce; online there are only brief synthetic cards, almost always accompanying the specimens for sale. For the rest, nothing. The history of this cultivar (a plant that does not exist in nature but obtained through hybridization and crossbreeding by man) remains shrouded in mystery.

In this article I try to summarize what I have learned in years of cultivation and what I have managed to learn about this intriguing Echinopsis cultivar, whose flowering is among the most bizarre in the whole family of cacti (…).

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Strange combinations of Nature: how did an onzuka end up in the pot of an old Thelocactus?

When many plants are grown in a relatively small space such as that offered by a greenhouse (however wide it can be), it can often happen to discover welcome surprises in the pots. Cacti whose flowers have been pollinated naturally by insects or self-fertile cacti, capable of doing everything by themselves, produce fruits which, once dry, split letting the seeds fall directly onto the soil at the base of the plant. This is how one can find specimens of a certain age surrounded by seedlings or small plants, in a sort of “potted” re-proposition of what commonly occurs in nature. In spite of what one might think by observing the precise procedures necessary for the reproduction of cacti, spontaneous sowing is a common phenomenon in cacti and is sometimes able to give real surprises, as has happened to me these days.

Here is a small report in the following article. (…)

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What are cactus ‘suckers’ or pups? Is it better to remove them? Do they affect flowering?

Let’s talk about cactus pups o cactus suckers. Some call them “branches”, others call them “new heads”. Some, more prosaically, call them “children” of the mother plant or “pups”. In all cases, they are new “protuberances” that sprout around the body of the main plant.

In cacti, as well as in agaves, this is a common phenomenon, and in some species, it never happens, in others it very easily happens, even with young plants. Attention: we are not talking about true seedlings born under the stem of the mother plant from seeds that have fallen from the latter, but about authentic new bodies that are attached to the main stem and sprout from the latter, and then grow steadily in size. The correct term is “suckers”, and anyone who grows cacti or has looked at this plant family in a nursery or botanical garden will have seen one or more suckers. Why do cacti produce suckers or pups, which genera are more likely to suck and are less so? And again, the most frequently asked question: is it true that pups steal energy from the mother plant and reduce flowering? Can the suckers themselves blossom? Another frequently asked question: is it better to leave them attached to the mother plant or remove them? Can they be used as cuttings to obtain new plants identical to the mother plant, and in the event of disease of the latter, can they be detached to save it and reproduce it? In other words, how to propagate cactus pups?

In this article, we take a closer look at the subject and answer all these questions (…).

Continue reading “What are cactus ‘suckers’ or pups? Is it better to remove them? Do they affect flowering?”

Compositions with succulents: how to choose plants and what is important to know

Better to set the record straight right away: the topic of compositions has very little to do with the spirit of this site. In fact, we are just the opposite: on the one hand, the spartan approach that aims to obtain plants similar to those in habitat and that is the basis of my cultivation method; on the other hand, cultivation for aesthetic purposes only, which I do not practice but which we know very well is widespread. But life, as you know, is never all black or all white; some nuance must always be there…. So, here is an article accompanied by a video of mine on how to make a simple succulent plant arrangement. After all, an eye for aesthetics never hurts, and even I, who love “lived-in,” nature-like plants, do not disdain a well-done composition, as long as it is no-frills and made with respect for the needs of the individual plants. Warning: the theme may seem obvious and the subject matter very simple, but it’s not so and you will understand why in the next lines.  Assuming that in plant compositions everyone is free to do what they want, this is just an aesthetic field, that is, related to personal taste, if you want to make compositions that will last over time and that will not make the plants suffer or die quickly, it will be wise to choose the right essences judiciously and place them in the correct substrate.

Let’s see in this article how to correctly choose the plants for our compositions (…)

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The thorns of cacti: what they are for and why these plants have abandoned their leaves

Just as we find a wide variability of shapes and colors in the leaves of botanical species in general, which can be flat, fleshy, needle-shaped, ovate, heart-shaped, lanceolate, etc., we find the same variety in the thorns of cacti. Over the millennia, evolution has led to a remarkable range of shapes and colors, with spines that can have a papery or elastic and very fine consistency or, again, appear rigid, squat and short, long and broad, flat or tapered, sharp, hooked, black, gray, white, red, yellow. In general we can say that cacti are the only plants to have thorns, since in other specimens of the botanical world it is not entirely correct to speak of real thorns. Let’s think of the common roses: what we call thorns are actually excrescences that are produced along the stems, alternating with the leaves, which cacti do not have. So what exactly are thorns and how did cacti come to evolve with these “weapons” along the stem? What is the function of the spines in cacti? Why are some pointed while others are hooked? And why are there also cacti that have no thorns at all?

We will answer all these questions in the following article. (…)

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