How to best destroy cacti...?!?

[BennieAnTheJets]

Wow - here is a different take on life: how to destroy cacti. See last paragraph. Scale seems to do the trick where even mechanical removal seems to fail.

I am just trying to get my little baby to grow.

ROFL.gif (9.63 KiB) Viewed 624 times

http://www.arc.agric.za/arc-ppri/Pages/ ... actus.aspx

[mikethecactusguy]

we forget that non-native cactus can be as invasive as any other type of non-native plant.

[BennieAnTheJets]

Very true. I am so focused on adoring that piece of living art that nature shared with me in that little clay pot that it is hard for me to see my little treasure as part of a species that acts as an unwelcome, aggressive,successful and harmful invasive in some ecosystems. I just wish it would do that well in my little pot, ha ha. Gotta keep those scale bugs away!

[DaveW]

Australia was overrun with introduced prickly pears and both chemical and other methods failed to control them. Therefore they introduced Cactiblastis Cactorum a moth whose grubs did the trick. In fact it is the only insect that ever had a monument erected to it for controlling the problem:-

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments ... radication

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... tralia.jpg

They had the same trouble with rabbits therefore introduced the disease myxomatosis which worked at first but later the rabbits became resistant to it, showing plant chewing bugs often continue to work better than diseases. Some places in S. America have also been invaded by introduced American Cylindropuntia's but you cannot introduce alien cactus insects when you have native cacti as well you wish to preserve.