image: flickr.com/photos/dracobotanicus/3166952062/

This is really a very hot place to stay. The most important point to the weather conditions of the Sonoran Desert is the quantity of rainwater that drops. In fact, there’s much more rainfalls in the Sonoran Desert compared to any other desert. As soon as it does get rainwater, the desert becomes soaked, as well as the air is chilled. Each time there is no rain, the place is absolutely dried out and extremely hot.

Despite the severe conditions, the Sonoran desert hosts all sorts of vegetation and wildlife that enjoy the hot and dry environment and that have adapted over time to reside here. Many of them are unique and rare.

Effective drainage is actually the most significant property of a soil mix made for cacti. The typical mix includes 1/2 of grit, for example fine sand or crushed stone, and also 1/2 of organic matter such as leaf mould, peat moss, or something similar to it. Nowadays you’ll find numerous bagged cactus mixes in local stores, to say nothing of online shops.

While deciding upon pots for planting your cactus, terracota, stone and concrete ones will probably be the best choice, as they don’t let the roots sink in water. Additionally ensure that your pot contains drainage holes. For any cactus having a circular shape, pick a pot which is 5 cm wider than the plant. If you’ve got a straight cactus, select a container with the width of 1/2 of the plant’s height.

Any time you plant a cactus, care and attention must come first for your and your plant’s sake. Cover your cactus with a piece of thick paper or cloth and put on thick safety gloves during the procedure.

When designing the pots for your cactuses stick to the exact same rules which you use for many other plants. Just combine various sizes, shampes and colors to your liking. A nice-to-look-at arrangement can be achieved if you have a single big box with numerous plants. Or perhaps place each cactus in its own pot and then group them as you think is perfect.

Close the drain hole with the help of a fragment of broken ceramic or perhaps a piece of steel screen. After that load the pot part way with soil mix and then put the cactus into the pot. Make use of a tea spoon to load up soil mix around the plant. When you are done planting, place in a top layer of tiny rocks in order to make a completed picture which additionally improves the foundation of the plant.

Purchase any sort of bag of stones you prefer or select crushed stone which improves the overall look of the cactus as well as the pot. Go ahead and include any kind of decorating things at this stage, just set your imagination free.

As soon as the cactus is actually in a growing phase, fertilize it approximately each and every month. Most succulents, and cacti in particular, require such nutrients as potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus, as well as trace elements. You should utilize any kind of total liquid plant food or a specific fertilizer intended for cactus plants.

Water your prickly friend on a regular basis throughout the growing period. Remember, watering is preferable to a sprinkle each day or two. Any time you notice that the soil is totally dried out, you need to water the cactus once again. The majority of cacti can grow without the need for water for months in chilly conditions or throughout their inactive period. Continue normal watering only when the growing period gets started.

Image source: flickr.com/photos/ne/2192220571/

To begin with, your cactus baby might be of Dutch, Chinese, or Iranian descent. Or it might simply come to you from your grandmother, what is, oddly enough, much more preferred in this situation – just because it grew up under our sun, in our soil and sucked in our water. But, wherever it comes from, it must be first properly transplanted. Chinese cactuses are often sold bare-root, what is not bad at all – you are not buying a pig in a poke, but have a good opportunity to pick up a healthy plant with strong roots.

A cactus plant from Holland will quickly poke out of the pot with a lump of peat. After that it must be carefully cleaned starting from from the roots. The same thing must be done with a plant from Iran. But in case of “grandma’s cactus” you will probably have to work hard while trying to pick it out of a tin.

A healthy cactus plant usually has a plenty of roots. But if you see short and weak and pity rootlets or fail to find them at all while removing the plant from the pot, don’t be too much upset – this is not the end. Put the plant upright in a bright but not sunny place for 3-5 days. Don’t worry, it will do it only good.

But if the roots are all right, you can safely proceed to transplanting. In order not to overload you with all sorts of professional details about the proper soil for cacti, I will put it short – the substrate should be composed half of washed river sand and half of mountain foliated soil. Both components can be easily found in the mountain area. It is best to avoid clay pots – plastic ones are more suitable in our climate.

Don’t forget about the drainage. It could be a few potsherds, fragments of bricks, stones, or pieces of foam. When planting make sure that the roots of a cactus are not bend upwards. It’s better to cut them out, if they are already very high. Another important point: the substrate must not be above the root collar, a place where the roots actually begin. If the root collar looks ugly, or the cactus is unstable, you can put some stones around it. They will not only serve as decoration, but also won’t let water wash away the particles of soil and significantly reduce evaporation.

Well, we finally came to the stage, when the biggest mistake is often made. DON’T water the cactus right after you finished transplanting! Make a pause of 3 and more days in case of tiny seedlings and up to several months for large plants. 7-10 days will be perfect for a cactus with the size of a small apple. To make it easier for the plant in these waterless days, put it in a bright but not sunny place and slightly spray it with warm water from time to time. When the waterless period is over, start watering with a small amount of water gradually increasing the portion. Also make your prickly friend accustomed to the sun gradually preventing it from getting sun-burnt, otherwise the scars will stay forever.

Free-wheelingly translated from www.flowersweb.info/cactusclub/interesting/experience-1.php
Image is taken from www.flickr.com/photos/mybloodyself/4686898430/

Stems, fruits and seeds of cactus have been have been traditionally used as food for centuries. They are eaten raw or precessed: baked, fried, boiled. People make jams, jellied and various sorts of beverages of cactus. The stems of certain cacti are perfect for making candied fruits. Fresh young shoots of Opuntia are often added to salads (without spines, or course). Hot dishes with cactuses taste particularly delicious.

Still many of us may think that cactus food is something that is pretty much exotic. But in fact, everyone can try cactuses, even those which we have on our windowsills. You should know that there are no poisonous cacti and all their parts (but for spines, of course) are eatable. Some cactus types contain drug substances and give you hallucinations, so you should be careful and don’t take in too much – however, in most cases it’s not possible since these cacti don’t usually taste very good. You should also bear in mind that home plants are more or less exposed to chemical treatment such as biocide and artificial fertilizers) and, therefore, you need to rinse the parts which you are going to try. Anyways, keep your small kids away from your prickly friends – they should not be treated to such meals.

So one can chew a piece of any cactus kept at home. But in most cases you will be disappointed – most of them will taste grassy. Fruits of most indoor cacti are simply too small or not fleshy. The only exception may be young large segments of prickly pear cactus with few spines.  However, you can always try berries that adorn many species of mamillaria (also known as nipple-cactus): they are juicy, sour, and have no aroma. Red juice of these berries is a good food dye. Many mamillaria fruits are tied without pollination, so it’s not a problem to grow them at home. With some effort it’s not very difficult to get a more visible “crop”. Having pollinated two flowers of different nipple-cacti you will soon get pear-shaped pink ribbed fruit with the size of a small plum. They are juicy, fleshy, and edible. As for their taste, they are just tasteless, but it’s worth experimanting.

You can get even more interesting result by cross-pollination hybrid varieties of crab-cacti (Epiphyllum). Don’t worry if you have just one blooming cactus. It’s not necessary to have both plants in your house for cross-pollination – ask neighbors, friends or colleges whether them have a “partner” for your prickly friend. Just pluck its flower – be careful not to damage it, as the excreting juice will make the pollen useless. The pollen can be also collected with a dry or slightly damp sponge or soft brush, so you don’t even need to pluck a flower. The collected pollen doesn’t lose its properties for several days if kept in the fridge.

The pollen is applied by drawing the flower’s anthers or brush with the pollen across the snout of the other flower. Cactus fruit is formed in the bottom of the flower tube. If all goes well, the base of the flower begins tto grow and thicken. In about a it produces a pink fruit with the shape of a plum and shiny skin. The ripe fruit is soft and easily detached from the stem. Cut it lengthwise and eat its flesh with seeds with a spoon. There are many enthusiastic descriptions of its taste and aroma, but it is better not to read them in advance in order not to be slightly disappointed afterwords.

However, the most spectacular fruit, which you can grow in home conditions is the berry of selenicereus (aka night queen flower). The main difficulty in obtaining it is to find two simultaneously blooming plants. As a reward, you will get a heavy orange-sized fruit densely covered with spines and smal hairs. This “berry” is really tasty and flavorous. Cut it into pieces and eat its flesh with a spoon. Bon apetit!

Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/octopushat/3205154762/

Fact 1: Sold for $120,000. Some years ago a unique collection of cacti was sold at the Sotheby’s auction in New York. The starting price of the item was $35,000, but the price rose up to $120,000 during the bidding. The lucky winner was one of the owners of Daimler-Benz (currently Daimler AG), a German automobile manufacturer.

Fact 2: More than 2,500 cactus species. In the ancient Hellas any prickly plant, such as burdock or artichoke, was called cactus. The taxonomic classification of plants was not developed yet. And only in the XVIII century the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus first used the word ‘cactus’ to describe a particular genus of plants. Nowadays more than 2,500 cactus species are distinguished.

Fact 3: Champ in endurance. With the air temperature of 37°С a cactus can reach the temperature of 52°С. A cactus can grow up to 15 meters and can stay alive for a long time even without its roots. Luther Burbank, а renowned horticulturist, left a cactus hanging upside down on a tree for six years for the sake of experiment. Then he successfully planted it again and the cactus continued to grow.

Fact 4: So various in size. The smallest cactus in the world is called Blossfeldia. It is so small that can be comfortably put in a teaspoon. And the world’s largest cactus is Californian giant Cereus. It resembles a chandelier by its shape and its stem can store up to 2 tons of water. The tallest cactus of this species grew up to 150 years and reached the height of 24 meters.

Fact 5: Most beautiful cactus. The flower of Cereus serpentinus is considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world. This cactus blooms only at night. The flower has the size of a large plate, almost 30 cm in diameter. It consists of 75 golden scales, 25 long pointed snow-white petals arranged spirally, and 600 luminous stamens. This cactus is very fastidious and the only place where it took root and now continues to grow is the cactus garden in Monte Carlo. This garden is situated on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and in some its places there are natural “bridges” made of cactuses that hang over the coasts and precipes and can serve the visitors of the garden.

Fact 6: Beware of cactus handshake. If you walk barefoot or with unprotected hands and there are cactuses nearby, you’d better think twice. Cactus experts say that a human hand can catch more than about a hundred sharp spines after an incautious “handshake” with a cactus. And those who had such an acquaintance know how painful it is to pull those spines out. The record in this respect was made in 1956 – 267 spines were stuck into the hand of an unfortunate Brazilian.

Fact 7: Australian cactus terror. But the most numerous victims of cactus sharp hospitality are Australians. Opuntia was brought to Australia from Brazil and in a short period of time got widely spread all over the continent. Soon almost all the cattle was nearly extinguished: cows ate cactuses and died suffering from sharp spines in their stomachs. Australia was saved from Opuntia by Argentine moth, a cactus pest that was dispersed from planes. There is even a monument to Argentine moth in Australia that is, in fact, the only monument ever set up to a butterfly.

Fact 8: Mexican top secret. Do you know what carmine, a unique bright red dye, is made of? By the way it was the state secret of Mexico until 1785. But now we know that it is made of cochineal insects that were once found only in this country. Mexicans used squirrel tails to sweep the insects from cactuses, then steamed and dried them to prepare the dye.

Fact 9: Most dangerous cactus. They belong to the genus Lophophora, or peyote, and their cultivation is strictly prohibited in all countries because of strong hallucinogens they contain. While converting Aztecs to Christianity the Catholic priests asked them strictly two questions: “Have you tried human flesh?” and “Have you tried peyote?” Common Aztecs were prohibited to pick peyote under death penalty. Only the Aztec priests had the right to do it.

Fact 10: Cacti are delicious. Some of them really are. For example, slices of the so called candy cactus are favorite food of Mexicans. Some cacti are perfect to make jam of. Some of them are eaten fresh. Some are stewed with meat. Some are salted and pickled. And this list seems to be endless. It’s interesting to note that in the XIX century by crossing many species of cacti breeders raised a new spineless cactus that tasted like orange.

Peyote, also known as Lophophora williamsii, is a small cactus with no spines that grows mainly in south-eastern Mexico and southern Texas. Because of its strong psychoactive effect, Peyot has a long history of ritual, religious and magical use by Native Indians for whom, we must say, growing hallucinogenic cacti has been common since time immemorial and this type of household activity has gained a strong cultural basis.

The ancient Aztec tribes began cultivating this psychedelic cactus centuries ago. Aztec priests used to chew reach the state when they could unfold a more subtle matter. Such psychedelic trips were usually accompanied with whispering of prayers and spells, which gradually culminated in some illegible mutter similar to baby talk. It was believed that the use of the peyote cactus can lead to direct connection with the gods. During these cactus rituals ancient Indians could see faces of the gods and get in contact with spirits of the dead. Needles to say that even nowadays there are people (and they are not only Native Americans) who believe in the miraculous effect of peyote and use it for the same purpose.

In ancient times there was no necessity to go to witches and fortune tellers to know ones future. It was enough just to shove a piece of Peyote or San Pedro cactus, or hallucinogenic mushrooms in one’s mouth and the future could be seen in full view. A lot of natives often went mad being under the influence of psychotropic cacti and hallucinogenic mushrooms. They were haunted by morbid visions of strange people coming from the outside to eradicate their culture and to build Silicon Valley and Hollywood on its bones. And those strangers were probably bloodthirsty Spaniards and those who followed.

Сactus Peyote contains psychotropic substance mescaline, a potent natural hallucinogen that may lead to psychological dependence after long use and bring harm to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. That is why peyote is forbidden almost everywhere in the world. So all fans of entheogens and ethnobotany who want to taste the fruit forbidden and take an adventure should be warned: it’s gonna be a long one.

Have you ever been to or have you ever seen the pictures of the Andes or the Cordilleras? These are the places of such cactus types as astrophytum, cleistocactus, echinopsis, lobivia, notocactus, oreocereus, rebutia and others. Naked, forbidding rocks rise above stony gorges, and huge woolly blooming cereuses grow on these rocky walls. It seems incredible, as you can never tell what they cling to and how they survive: at a daytime they are scorched by the bright and merciless sun, at night they freeze in the cold mountain air. These types of cactus would die, if they had no means of protection as attire of fuzz, prickles and setae. The dense woolly cover protects the green stalk from sunburns and supercooling.

Mountain cacti – pillar-shaped oreocereus and spherical lobivia – suffer from the lack of the sunlight even more than desert cacti. They quickly start “to grow bald”, losing dense prickles and fuzz. They can frequently perish from rotting of the stalk. Damp humus soil is especially baneful for these types of cactus. The dwarf rebutia growing on mountain meadows and in intermountain troughs endures it much better. Many of these cactuses are dressed in a proofing of white or golden setae.

If you keep these cactus types dry and cold (3-5 °) in winter and give them enough sunlight in summer, they will excellently grow and blossom already at the age of two years.

When we hear the word “desert” we usually imagine Sahara or Kara-Kum with their scorching sand-dunes devoid of any vegetation. But the soil of stony deserts of Central and South America is very rich in all necessary salts for cacti. Though its contains very little amount of humus, water dissolves salts and the plant can absorb them.

But if rains are extremely rare here, where does water comes from? Plentiful dews, falling at night and flowing down between ribs of cacti, the night fogs accumulating on prickly stalks – this is a poor water diet of desert types of cactus growing in Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador.

Roots of many cacti of these places are radish-shaped and are capable to save water within, or ramify widely near the surface. To reduce moisture evaporation, cacti aspire to curtail the area of the stalk surface. That’s why they have either spherical or a short cylindrical form.

Desert cactus types are not afraid of burning sun: some of them have thick and dense thin skin, which becomes flat and “hides” in the ground for the period of droughts; some have high sharp ribs causing shade; others are covered with dense prickles or setae, looking like a brush.

For their correct development desert types of cactus require much sun, soil containing little humus and careful watering. They can easily die because of water stagnation in the ground even during summer heat.

The word savanna usually means vast territories of grass plains, covered with herbage, isolated islets of undersized trees and bushes. Its distinctive features are a long dry period without rain falling on winter and spring months, and plentiful rains and thunderstorms in summertime. Fluctuations in temperature reach 20 °C and more.

Such climate is considered to be the most favorable for cactus types growing on these plains. The most popular of them are coryphanta and mammillaria. These types of cactus excellently bear dry and cool winter and need a lot of warmth, sun and watering in summer, but they are afraid of water stagnation near their roots. The soil for these cacti should contain less humus, than the soil for forest cactus species, and it should have an admixture of loam.

By the way, the majority of savanna cacti, especially undersized ones like mammillaria, grow well in penumbra. In natural conditions they hide from the sun in thick grass.

Forest saguaros have thin and flexible creeping stalks and air roots on them, which deliver additional moisture from the air. As a rule, saguaros grow close to the edges of the forest, where there is more light and the air circulates freely between the trees. In case of drought their stalks wrinkle, but with the first rain they become juicy and green again. That’s why these types of cactus belong to another group of cacti – to xerophytes. This group is much bigger than the group of epiphytes, and includes various species from different areas of habitation.

Hylocereinae already have the means of protection from the excessive water evaporation or overheat of the stalk. For example, grey wax bloom and short but strong thorns of celenicereus, a countless number of small setaceous barbs of aporocactus and chamaecereus, etc.