Cactus Coincidence: My Friend's Cactus in Blooms & Mine Too!

[turbo]

Cactus coincidence!

A friend of mine on another forum posted pictures of his cactus in bloom - beautiful! For those that don't own cactii, you can wait for years and years until one decides to bloom, and the blossoms are very short-lived - sometimes just a day or so.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2503/3893567422_2969907be7_b.jpg

Now here's the coincidence. I commented on his image (he is a fantastic photographer) and then thought I'd look at our cactii. As luck would have it, the smallest one of all has a blossom, and two additional buds near the top. It's only about 2" tall, so it's not going to have big flashy flowers, but it's interesting that it decided to bloom at the same time as my friend's cactus in England. I don't know for sure what the little red thing is, but I assume its a fruit containing seeds that developed from a prior blossom - it was on there when my wife grabbed these little guys while repotting her mother's cactus.

 

[drizzle]

I used to have one tiny rounded cactus on my desk, but not for long [it lasts almost for 6 months] anyway, I like the photos

ps. you should invite your friend to join PF for photo contests, he’ll beat them all for sure ...no offence PFers

 

[physics girl phd]

I used to have cacti of this kind (gave them to friends before a move), and red thing is a fruit (though I wouldn't try eating it!). They're really a hardy type... my mom had one for over 10 years (it grew to about 10 inches tall and leaned against the window-sill for support). She eventually got sick of it and moved it to our dark and cold basement, but it still lived for over a year!

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

It looks like maybe your cactus is cross breeding with your peppers turbo.

 

[turbo]

From the pose, he looks like a monster (king) cactus with a crown, chewing on a nice cayenne, and holding court in front of his subjects.

 

[turbo]

I used to have one tiny rounded cactus on my desk, but not for long [it lasts almost for 6 months] anyway, I like the photos

ps. you should invite your friend to join PF for photo contests, he’ll beat them all for sure ...no offence PFers

I wouldn't want the competition, though. Greg is killer at macro shots, especially, though he often comes up with some nice shots of horses on English heath, etc. If you Google on "Star Vistas", you will see that even in rainy old England dedicated astrophotographers can rival the professionals. The processing was done by Noel Carboni of Florida.

For an idea of how impressive their book is, their are three forwards - one each by Sir Arthur Clarke, Sir Patrick Moore, and Dr. Brian May (guitarist for Queen, and recently-minted PhD).

 

[WhoWee]

We've always had much better results growing the smaller plants.

 

[turbo]

We've always had much better results growing the smaller plants.

They are REALLY tough and can stand a lot of abuse. We have dry winters with poor light and lots of cold, so they have to be hardy. We have a larger barrel-like cactus, among others, and it undergoes growth spurts when conditions are good, then "pulls in its horns" when things aren't so good, so there are parts of various diameters.