Yes Bill....you must have one....your life will not be good until you get one....tephros, maihuenia, maihueniopsis, tacingas, consoleas...they are calling you Bill....



Peterb

Hello-

Harry, thanks for bringing this up. I also often wonder what it's like in Leeds or Sussex, or Belgium, or Tazmania, although I got a pretty clear picture of the climate in Worthing thanks to subscribing to The Exotic Collection way back in 1975 at the age of 14.

Peterb

Hello all-

Just in case some of you missed this:

http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede_fotogr ... _Percy.htm

a strange creature indeed....

Peterb

Hi- Nice mantises! (mantisses? manti? whatever...) I once had a real mealybug problem on several of my cacti and decided not to use Orthene. I put them all outside (it was June) and lo and behold, a kind of wicked looking black waspy thing started coming around. The mealy infestation was completely ...

Hello-

I wonder if it might be Opuntia rufida, the so-called "blind pear." The common name is as it is because the wind picks up in south Texas, and the glochids get into cows' eyes, and they are eventually blinded by the injuries.

Peterb

Hi Michiel- if you don't smoke, drink only moderately, avoid too much red meat, exercise a bit every day, always wear your seat belt...you might see those saguaro flowers by about age 66-75. I wish I had sown the following when I was 16: Backbergia militaris Haageocereus (variety) Oreocereus (all of...

Hello- Perhaps as a marker of how remote and untrammeled the area that Juan and Florencia are sending pictures from, a fairly extensive amount of digging on the web yielded very little information. I gather it's a mining region? Curious where it is in relation to Antofagasta? Absolutely gorgeous pic...

Hi Mark, yes, I use a cheap-o heating pad underneath. It seems to be worth the small expenditure in encouraging the seedlings.

Peterb

a pereskia and a pseudolithos?

Hi Perry- one of the tricks I've picked up is to overwinter seedlings as if it isn't winter. Warm, fairly moist (almost daily light spraying). This works here in New Mexico anyway. Actually, for a couple of years they seem to appreciate this trick. By year three they get treated like regular plants,...

Hi Michiel-

Well, when you're in your mid-forties like I am, two years is a loooong time. I'll have to check my records to see if we cold stratified those Maihuenia seeds or presoaked them or gave them special treatment.

I'll find out and get back to you.

happy growing,

Peterb

hey plancelot I'm going to take a wild stab at an explanation and say "virus." From a web article: "Cactus viruses characteristically induce the production of large cigar- or spindle-shaped Giemsa-stainable inclusions, mainly in the outer cell layers of infected plants. Such inclusion...

Hi- yes, that is Maihuenia poeppigii. High Country Gardens is trying them out for cold hardy rock gardening. The seed originally came, I think, from Alplains, a remarkable company that often has seed for all sorts of crazy stuff. The first few trials from seed for the Maihuenia were not so great, bu...

Hey there- No, I didn't put it there. There have been two, one larger than the other, hanging around all summer. I'll check it out and see if I can get an ID. I gather there are a few kinds of phasmids that live here in the southwest. (A friend of mine had an encounter once in Texas with a beastie c...

hi plantcelot

I'd like the capability to take some super macro pics of the various seedlings, as their tremendous variety under a magnifying glass is a very entertaining thing.

peterb