Spring Flowers - Escobaria tuberculosa

Texas Claret Cup

Escobaria tuberculosa



Horse Crippler (Echinocactus texensis)



Echinocereus dasyacanthus

Texas Rain Bombs

Mammillaria heyderi - One of the pitfalls of growing cactus in Austin, Texas is the occasional "Rain Bomb".  Over the last three weeks I have recorded over 12 inches of rainfall at our house, filling the elevated cactus garden to overflowing and not giving the cactus adequate time to dry out.  Several cacti have turned to mush including this formerly handsome Mammillaria.

Echinocereus reichenbachii var. fitchii - from far South Texas

Second Flowers

In this picture you can see me using a bit of Cedar bark on top of a newly transplanted Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) that was starting to sunburn at the top.  The little bit of extra shade seems to be just enough to let the plant recover from sunburn and when the lighter colored sunburn spots start to green backup I remove the extra shade a little at a time.



This cactus purchased simply as a Claret Cup Cactus seems to be some sort of hybrid Echinocereus triglochidiatus, the flowers are a bit more orange than typical and the cactus is taller with shorter spines.




My original plan was to have an "eye level" cactus bed that would highlight the back lighting effect and make viewing smaller cactus easier for casual observation.  Many of the smaller cactus and cactus flowers have fine details that can only be appreciated when your seeing them nose to nose.



The Ocotillo was about 10 feet tall and without a single root that hadn't rotted away in the wet sand in the plastic pot which it was planted in at the nursery.  I knew that if it was to miraculously grow new roots it would need to be fixed in place and not heave out of the ground with each passing breeze.  Its hard to see in this photo but my solution was to drive four stakes around the plant and then lay two sticks in an "X" pattern across the top weaving them between the canes, and then the ends of each point on the "X" were secured with baling wire to the stakes that I had sunk into the bed prior to the planting.  This configuration kept the Ocotillo steady but the magic roots never grew.