Piante grasse cactus spine

Tag: diseases

Severely dehydrated Astrophytum asterias: here’s a rescue attempt with… hydroculture!

Hydroculture and succulent plants sound, in some ways, like a conceptual oxymoron. Plants that have naturally evolved to cope with drought, rainfall concentrated in short periods of the year; plants that grow in extremely dry soils, in short, how can they get along with hydroculture? In other words, how can they be grown with a technique that requires the roots to be in constant contact with water? The answer is simple: they can’t. However … however in certain cases and following precise precautions, the constant contact of the roots of a succulent plant with water can be used to save that plant. Even if that plant is a succulent. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do these days to save two Astrophytum asterias of my sowing in conditions of extreme dehydration, on the verge of dying of thirst (which would be very strange for a cacti!). But let’s go step by step and see exactly what happened to these two plants and how (and why) I’m trying to save them through a kind of “temporary hydroculture”.

I explain everything with lots of photos in the following article, which I consider – in fact – the description of an experiment that is perhaps risky and certainly unorthodox but at the same time not devoid of logic. (…)

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Be careful of winter blooms: rot can start from here. Here are the species at risk

Unfortunately it is a less rare phenomenon than one might think. The flower itself, the maximum expression of the plant, its instrument for reproducing and safeguarding the species, can transform itself into its executioner. With cacti, plants that require seasonal rest corresponding to the winter months, the flower can sometimes be fatal. It obviously only happens with those species that flower in mid-winter, therefore a small minority compared to all cacti. But it is often precisely from there, from that flower that blooms in November, December or January, that the rot is triggered and which, if neglected or not seen, can lead the specimen to death. This is what happened to two of my Ferocactus latispinus in recent days. Or rather, in the past few weeks, except that the damage has become apparent recently. And now it was too late to intervene and save the plants.

In this article we look into this phenomenon and see what can be done to prevent it or, at least, be able to intervene before the rot passes from the flower to the plant. (…)

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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 (…).

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When the cactus “spins”: what is etiolation, how to prevent it and contain the damage

An etiolated cactus is a plant with an unnatural habit and which has suffered from a more or less serious lack of light. The phenomenon is unfortunately irreversible but it is possible to prevent etiolation and stop it.

Who hasn’t happened at least once to observe in some office, apartment or even non-specialized nurseries (or garden) those cone-shaped cacti with thin spines and pale green stem? Cacti with a rounded base and an elongated apex, tapered to the point of giving the plant an almost pyramidal shape. The novice grower may think that is the normal bearing of the plant, but the grower with some experience – or even just a critical mind – usually is horrified at such plants. If anything, he or she may be saddened, because he or she knows full well that that is not the normal bearing of the cacti at all, but simply the outcome of what is technically called “etiolation” or, commonly, “spinning.” By the way, the photos above and those accompanying this article are of plants in a nursery and not mine, I want to make that clear right away!

Why does this fate happen to some cacti? How to avoid cactus etiolation and how to distinguish it from normal growth or from growth that is simply dissimilar to normal? Is it possible to remedy the damage caused by spinning on a cactus? We answer these questions in the following article. (…)

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Cacti and diseases: stop anxiety, sometimes we can’t help but let Nature take its course

Let’s talk about cacti and diseases starting from a simple photo. The plant that inspired this article, and which you see above, is (or rather, was) an Ancistrocactus (=Glandulicactus) mathssonii. I had obtained this specimen with my sowing about ten years ago and fortunately eight or nine other “brothers” of this plant are still in perfect health, growing and flowering regularly. This particular plant, although treated exactly like the other specimens of that sowing and planted in the same type of substrate in which my other mathssonii live (clay, marl and 60% aggregates), a couple of years ago took a fungal pathology and within a few weeks it was dead. I think it was fusarium, but today it doesn’t matter, because the disease has run its course and what remains is… the armor of this cactus, that is a beautiful interweaving of thorns that embraces the void left by the stem which, over time, it dried up until it decomposed and disappeared altogether. The observation of what remains of this plant, which for a couple of years I have kept along a low wall not far from the greenhouse, where I usually move the diseased plants (by diseases, in this case, I mean generically pathogens and parasites) to prevent them from infecting other specimens, led me to some considerations on the cultivation and treatment of plant diseases.

Considerations that I have condensed in the following article an excerpt of which was also published in the British Cactus and Succulent Society newsletter. (…)

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