Piante grasse cactus spine

Tag: knowledge

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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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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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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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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Mammillaria luethyi, the incredible story of its discovery in the Fifties and tips for growing it

Unlike what usually happens with cacti, Mammillaria luethyi was first observed by a researcher not in its habitat but in a… coffee can. Weird? Wait until you read the whole story, then. Yes, because the discovery of this species of Mammillaria is relatively recent (half of the Fifties of the twentieth century) and still today we cannot certainly define it as a widespread plant in cultivation or regularly available on the market. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most fascinating species among Mammillaria, one of the most intriguing and undoubtedly the one having the showiest flowering, and at the same time delicate and charming. As a counterbalance to these qualities, there are some difficulties in cultivation and the tendency of the root to rot: these aspects, in addition to the slowness in growth, make M. luethyi reserved for pure enthusiasts and experienced cactophiles, although with not a few difficulties.

The following article was published in Volume 61, Issue 2 (May 2021) of the Journal of The Mammillaria Society. Thanks to the editors for their welcome publication. (…)

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