Succulents and More™

Sometimes it seems not much is happening, but when I look at my photos, I realize there’s more going on than I give the garden, the plants, and myself credit for. On that note, another “This and that” post with random sightings that I hope you’ll find interesting. BROMELIAD FLOWERS I’ve lost most of the tags on my bromeliads so I can’t tell you what these are, other than Neoregelia and Billbergia , but the flowers are cool because they’re so different from the other kinds of flowers I usually see. Many neoregelias produce a flush of color in the center just before they start to bloom The flowers themselves are tiny and barely emerge from the cup. The leaves blush in vibrant colors to attract pollinators, which might otherwise have a hard time finding the inconspicuous flowers. In contrast to neoregelias, billbergia flowers are highly visible They emerge from the center on a long stem and feature colorful petals (red in this case) and bracts (greenish yellow, pink, and purple on this o...

Growing cacti from seed is quite easy, but it requires patience. Depending on the genus and species, it may take two, three, four, or even five years for seedlings to grow into flowering-size specimens. I already have well over 100 cactus seedlings in my care, between the German echinopsis hybrids I mentioned recently , other open-pollinated echinopsis hybrids (‘June Noon’, ‘First Light’, and ‘Flying Saucer’), as well as dozens of assorted Astrophytum asterias . If you got tired just reading this, I sympathize. However, I had so many spectacular echinopsis hybrids flower earlier this spring that I decided to harvest seeds from two of them. The first is a German hybrid, Echinopsis ‘Liskes Feuerzauber’ (in the U.S. usually referred to as ‘Magic Fire’). It debuted this year with flowers that blew me away: Echinopsis ‘Magic Fire’ Echinopsis ‘Magic Fire’ Some cacti produce seed pods that dry up and release the seeds when they’ve become brittle. To harvest the seeds, all you have to do i...