New Cacti

1/29/12

Echinofossulocactus albatus

     I recently purchased two new cacti, not for the cactus garden, but for the tables in the yard.  The first, Echinofossulocactus albatus, is a small size cactus that makes a good potted plant specimen.  It is a bluish-green sphere that has a white, wooly top.  It produces small, yellow or white flowers and can propagate by seeds or shoots.  It originated in Mexico.

Epostoa blossfeldiorum

     The second cactus is an Epostoa blossfeldiorum.  Right now it is a small, potted plant, but it can grow up to 13 feet tall (4 m).  Extremely slow-growing, it may reach 4 feet in 30 years.  It is a columnar plant that has yellowish wool and bristles and flowers nocturnally in mid-summer with creamy white flowers.  It originated in northern Peru.  It doesn't like frost.  The nighttime temperatures here now are 48-50 F (9 to 10 C), so it should be ok outdoors.

     Have you noticed in your area when there is 10 hours of daylight things start happening?  I feel seeds and bushes and trees start waking up from their winter's nap around the end of January when this happens.  There are two interesting websites where you can check the hours of daylight for your city or latitude.  Google "daylight hours explorer" for one of the sites where you can move a bar for the latitude and another bar for the day of the year, and it will give you hours of daylight.  The other site is timeanddate.com.  Click on sun&moon, and then click on sun calculator.  Here you can input or choose a city and the site will give you sunrise and sunset times and hours of daylight.

Royal Velvet amaryllis

     Hooray!  My amaryllis finally bloomed this week.  The second bud has not yet opened, so I am watching and waiting for that.