Lewis_cacti said
im particularly envious about your ariocarpus range. i dont have even one, mainly becasue they are extremely rare and extremely expensive here.
I first read about
Ariocarpus fissuratus years ago & the book said that they were so hard to grow, you had to plant them in two pots and only water the outer one. And then I found them for sale at the dept. store I worked in, bareroot in a carton along with some typical "cactus soil"! This was 1975, and I've had a few of them ever since: they have bloomed only a few times and they certainly don't look like they have grown much, if at all. I read that one 'collecter' in Europe got one illegally as a 'paper weight' and it cost him $250. Can you get the seed? It might be possible to grow them that way. I read once what you have to go through to get plants into Australia; from what I understand, it's a royal pain (I don't know if you have that expression there)