Eagle Claw Cactus

Eagles Claw Cactus

Echinocactus horizonthalonius



aka Blue Barrel Cactus

A little dish cactus garden.  Later this little arrangement would be attacked by red spider mites, killing half of the inhabitants before I discovered the problem.  The remaining survivors found a new home in the fireplace cactus garden.  Somehow just moving things into a more natural habitat balances conditions enough so that spider mites get added to someone else's menu...ants, spiders, wasps something in nature designed to counter balance a surplus.

First Cactus Garden - Horseshoe Bay, Texas





Upon my return from visiting the Huntington Gardens in California I created this small cactus garden for my Mom in Horseshoe Bay in Central Texas.




You will see that in this first attempt I paid little attention to what might or might not be cold hardy long term.  Surprisingly many of the more tender plants survived and bloomed for several years before finally succumbing to temperatures in the  mid teens.  The Thelocactus setispinus (middle left) and Notocactus leninghausii (top left) would be the long term survivors.

An advantage to a small garden like this is that it can easily be covered with a blanket should subfreezing temperatures occur.  However, this protection is much less effective when temperatures stay below freezing for more than about eight hours at a time.




I rescued this little beauty from a new housing development close to my house.  It had already been unearthed and run over by a bull dozer clearing lots.  I was able to clean it up and pot it and the following spring it rewarded my efforts with a beautiful bloom and lots of little "pups" around the base.

This is a Pineapple Cactus (Coryphantha sulcata).




What I thought originally might be a Copperhead snake turns out to be the more kid friendly and beneficial Texas Rat Snake.  I am happy for him to eat is many rats as he likes, unfortunately they also eat baby birds and bird eggs as I will show in a later post.

Living Bird Seed!!! - This Ice Plant (Delosperma cooperi) turned out to be a favorite food of all sorts of finches (Lesser and American Gold Finches as well as Purple Finches and possibly House Finches) visiting our back yard, how they learned to eat it I have no idea being that it is non native and if they would even visit it had it been growing sprawled across the ground rather than suspended in a hanging basket.  Maybe there are other native succulent plants that finches consume in this way?