Golden Torch Cactus

Golden Torch
Echinopsis spachiana
(ek-in-OP-sis) (spak-ee-AY-nuh)
Synonyms: Torch Cactus, Cereus spachianus

As a change of pace here is a Cactus we saw growing in California last year. I thought something from that area would be nice since it is so cold out this morning. The thermometer says 49 degrees F but it feels colder. I went out with a tee shirt and was freezing. What a wild and whacky weather year we are having.

Torch Cactus is a night bloomer with strongly scented flowers. The flowers (not pictured) are fairly huge, up to 8 inches across and usually only last a day. It is a native of Argentina and can reach a height of 6 feet.

I am glad it is Friday. We have two stops today but both are for planting, which makes it okay. Have a nice weekend.

Prickly Pear Cactus Flower

Prickly Pear Cactus
Opuntia monacantha
(op-UN-shee-a) (mon-ah-KANTH-uh)
Synonyms: Palma-Brava, Opuntia


This beauty was blooming off the trail at the Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Garden on Catalina Island. The colors were pretty fantastic and it was the only cactus out of hundreds that I saw blooming.

We are flying back to the cold and dark Northeast today. It will be nice to be back home. I really miss the dogs and it will be great to see them.

Smooth Mountain Prickly Pear

Smooth Mountain Prickly Pear
Opuntia ficus-indica
(op-UN-shee-a)
Synonyms: Indian Fig, Opuntia tuna-blanca

While going over some old files I found this picture of a patch of Thornless Prickly Pear Cactus taken at Jack London State Park in Sonoma, California. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what this plant is actually called so I tried to use the name that had the most references. My research led me to the Wikipedia biography of Luther Burbank an interesting American plant breeder who dreamed of developing the Thornless Cactus for cattle feed. It is still used for that purpose but mainly grown for culinary purposes (fruits).

All Prickly Pear Cactuses are native to the Western hemisphere, although they have now spread around the globe. Mr. Burbank introduced several varieties of the thornless types, which lack the small hairlike thorns, called Glochids, which most of the other 200 species have. The thornless characteristics are controlled by genetics but stressed plants can sometimes grow thorns. There are several species that are cold hardy growing as far north as Canada. The thornless type is thought to be hardy to about 20 degrees F.

To liven up this post with a little color here is a picture of some Prickly Pear fruit that was spotted elsewhere in the park.

Honolulu Cactus

Click Here for a Larger Version


Click Here for a Larger Version

Honolulu Cactus

Finally made it home after a somewhat arduous journey of 48 plus hours. The blizzard that hit New York really messed up my travel plans. Yesterday I had boarding passes for 5 different flights and finally got one from Los Angles to St. Louis and to La Guardia today. It sure wore me out but exploring Hawaii for a couple of weeks was well worth it.

The trip home took a lot out of me and I am still real tired but wanted to share another plant that I saw in Hawaii. This Cactus was growing in Kapiolani Park on the quiet end of Waikiki. We saw quite a bit of Cactus on the islands especially in the hot dry areas. The climate of the Hawaiian Islands is totally amazing. Here is a reference page to the climate of Hawaii from the Western Regional Climate Center. The link gives a good overview of the weather there and in rainfall section it has a few interesting facts:

“If the islands of the State of Hawaii did not exist, the average annual rainfall upon the water where the islands actually lie would be about 25 inches. Instead, the actual average is about 70 inches. Thus the islands extract from the air that passes across them about 45 inches of rainfall that otherwise would not fall. That the mountains are dominantly responsible for this added water bonus is evident from annual rainfall maps, which show the tremendous amounts of rainfall deposited in mountainous areas in the average year. In many mountainous areas of the State these depths exceed 240 inches, or 20 feet. At Mt. Waialeale, on Kauai, the annual average reaches the extraordinary total of 486 inches – over 40 feet. This is the highest recorded annual average in the world.”

“An average of 70 inches of rainfall over Hawaii is equivalent to not quite 8,000 billion gallons of water per year. This is more than 10 times the annual water use of something over 700 billion gallons. According to the 1965 figures, irrigation accounted for 74 percent of this total use; industrial uses (chiefly for cooling) accounted for 19 percent, while the remaining seven percent was used for domestic and miscellaneous purposes.”

“There are very few areas elsewhere in the World and none elsewhere in the United States where rainfall gradients are as steep as they are in Hawaii. In a great many places in Hawaii the annual rainfall gradient exceeds 25 inches per mile; that is the rainfall increases 25 inches for each mile transversed along a straight line. In a very extreme instance, the gradient is 118 inches per mile along the 2-1/2 mile line from Hanalei Tunnel to My Waialeale on Kauai.”

And good for the cultivation of Cactus:

“The driest areas are on the upper slopes of the high mountains, on leeward coasts, or in leeward locations in the interior of the islands as in central Maui. In the driest of these areas the average annual rainfall is less than 10 inches; and one area, around Kawaihae Bay near the northern end of the west coast of Hawaii, the rainfall is less than seven inches.”

Needless to say I like the wetter areas, as the lush tropical jungle always impresses me with a huge selection of different species and abundant growth. Going from one type of climate to another to another all in a relatively short time period is a nice experience and fun to see what is going to be growing next.


This is a partial shot of the Cactus Planting the first two macros are from.
Click Here for a Larger Version

It is going to take a few weeks to sort out the pictures from this adventure. Some of that time will be used figuring out what plants are which. I am looking forward to the research.

Mount Soledad Cross La Jolla, California

Mount Soledad Cross La Jolla, California
Skywatch Friday

The San Diego area has been presenting a lot of skywatch opportunities. This first shot is the Latin Cross in Mount Soledad Park. Here is a link to more information on it:
Mount Soledad

The picture was shot in Black and White (monochrome setting) with the D700 and the 50mm/1.8 Nikon lens.

The second picture is from Tourmaline Surfing Park, which is ‘our’ beach. It is about a 3-minute walk to the sand from the house. It has been fun and a little weird to be mixing with the surfer crowd. The beach is beautiful and we have been taking the dogs down every couple of days to enjoy the sunset.


The third picture is a Prickly Pear Cactus that was growing at Torrey Pines State Reserve in La Jolla. There will be another post on Torrey Pines. The trees are the rarest Pines in North America. I shot it with Skywatch in mind. It was rare to see that many clouds!


For other skies from around the world check out
Skywatch Friday

Blue Bush

Blue Bush
Eucalyptus macrocarpa
(yoo-kuh-LIP-tus) (ma-kro-KAR-pa)
Synonyms: Mottlecah, Desert Mallee
Today’s Flowers

This plant was a highlight in a day full of botanical magic yesterday. I drove up to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Of all the gardens I have visited this one was one of the most stunning. On hindsight visiting on Valentine’s Day wasn’t the best idea since the garden was crowded with couples. Lucky I arrived early and had a couple of hours before the crowds started. The garden was unbelievable in many ways and the Desert and the Palm gardens were my favorite.

Blue Bush Foliage

This Blue Bush was growing in the Australian garden, which had a large collection of plants from down under. The bright gray foliage and the red flowers caught my attention right away. From looking the plant up it is a long-lived perennial that grows to 12 feet tall and produces a decorative nut (I didn’t see any on the two specimens at the garden). It is hardy to USDA Zone 9 and has low water requirements once established. They can suffer from sooty mold and the plants at Huntington were suffering a bit from that.

The Camellia Festival was going on at the garden. Their collection was amazing and some were 30 to 40 feet tall and covered with blooms. The Magnolia, Cherry trees and Azaleas were also blooming. One of the most fascinating things to me was there were a lot of plants that grow back east and all of the tropical stuff, too.

Saucer Magnolia

Here is a picture of the Cactus Collection; did I say it was amazing? It was. The paths kept circling around with more and more varieties and types to be seen.


I will be posting more Huntington pictures during the week. The camera seemed to be working well. I mostly used the D700 with the 60mm lens.

For more flower pictures from around the world visit
Today’s Flowers . It opens at 6pm GMT.

Silken Pincushion Cactus

Silken Pincushion Cactus
Mammillaria bombycina
(mam-mil-AR-ee-uh) (bom-BEE-kin-uh)
Synonyms: Chilita bombycina, Ebnerella bombycina

Pincushion Cactus is a generic name for about 170 species of Cactus mostly native to Mexico. It also covers several other genera. This little specimen was growing in Tucson and you can see just starting to flower. It had formed a nice low growing colony about 2 feet wide and 2 feet long. The white tops made an interesting contrast with the flowers and spines.

I have been really lazy about doing anything including taking pictures but I am going to go out today. There are a couple of nice Bird of Paradise flowers in the foundation planting of the house and they looking like a good candidate for pictures.

Cactus Love

Cactus Love

Wordless Wednesday

Easter Lily Cactus

Echinopsis sp.
(ek-in-OP-sis)

This Cactus was tagged Echinopsis at Planting Fields. They forgot to include which of 128 species it is. Echinopsis is a genus of Cactus that is native to South America. They range in size from tree-like to small thimble sized types. It is also known as the ‘Sea Urchin’ or 'Easter Lily' Cactus.


This is a Japanese Iris that I shot on July 1st.

Orange Star Impatiens

Impatiens
Impatiens walleriana
Synonym: Busy Lizzy
(im-PAY-shuns) (wall-er-ee-AH-nuh)

This picture was a little lesson for me. I didn’t write down if this was ‘Accent Orange Star’ or ‘Mega Orange Star’. I think it was from the ‘Accent’ series since it didn’t get very tall and the flowers weren’t the two inches wide that the ‘Mega Orange Star’ gets. I always enjoy having some Impatiens in the garden. The colors they keep coming up with are amazing to me. One thing I don’t like is the ever-growing trend of making them shorter and shorter. I like them a little taller for some areas. One time I accidentally fertilized my Impatiens with a very high Nitrogen lawn fertilizer and they grew to about 4 feet tall. The downside was they hardly had a flower all summer.

Most people are familiar with using Impatiens in the shady areas of the garden. They don’t need deadheading but require regular water to look their best. I found that the Deer do like to eat them so try and use a protected location. Hummingbirds and butterflies are attracted to the flowers. I have been using them in containers a lot lately and that has worked out very nice. At the end of the season I often bring some into the greenhouse for a little color for the winter. I have noticed indoors they need some fertilizer and have to be pinched back to prevent legginess.

This Cactus was growing in the Conservatory at work and I thought that since the Impatiens flower had kind of a geometric pattern to it I would post this one along with it. It is a specimen of Mammilaria supertexta.

I have been waiting all day to post this and am finally using Karen’s DSL to do it. Apparently when the cable guy was fixing the cable on the pole in front of my house he fixed it so good that it doesn’t work anymore.

Wordless Wednesday - Cactus Flower