Succulents and More™

It seems trite and trivial to show photos of cactus flowers the day after yet another senseless tragedy that destroyed families and ripped apart a community. But in the face of so much helplessness and lack of hope, it's only human to cling to what beauty there is in the world. At least I can give you a little bit of that today. Echinocereus durangensis  blooming for the first time. Some taxonomists lump it in with Echinocereus polyacanthus , a widespread species found across the southwestern US and northern Mexico west into  the Baja California peninsula. Echinocereus viereckii  ssp. morricalii Echinocereus viereckii  ssp.  morricalii Echinocereus viereckii  ssp.  morricalii Echinocereus pentalophus , white-flowering form Echinocereus pentalophus , white-flowering form Acanthocalycium spiniflorum from Argentina Echinopsis oxygona , a species native to southern Brazil, Uruguay and northern Argentina. Usually it's the Echinopsis  hybrids that get ...

Every now and then a book comes along that is a complete game changer. California Desert Plants (ISBN 978-1-941624-14-2) is one of them. Written by Phil Rundel, Robert Gustafson, and Michael Kaufmann and published just a few weeks ago by Backcountry Press , a small independent publisher in Northern California, it covers the tremendous diversity of plants in the three deserts that extend into California: the Great Basin, the Mojave, and the Sonoran (the California portion of the Sonoran is often referred to as the Colorado Desert, after the Colorado River). Of course there are other books on California desert flora, especially wildflowers. However, they're often organized by flower color (like Introduction to California Desert Wildflowers ), which makes it difficult to grasp the bigger picture. California Desert Plants takes a different approach, focusing on desert plants within distinct ecological communities. As a result, plants that live together are described together. “In this...

I vividly remember the first time I saw Echinopsis ‘Flying Saucer’ in flower. It was at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in April 2014: I couldn’t believe how many flowers were open at the same time, and how massive they were! Fast forward to the present. After a long quest trying to track down Echinopsis ‘Flying Saucer’, I finally found one last year at Bach’s Cactus Nursery in Tucson, Arizona. And on May 18, 2022 it flowered for the first time: The flower was a full 6 inches across. Here’s my wife’s hand for scale: Out of all the cactus flowers I’ve seen, ‘Flying Saucer’ might just be my favorite. It’s easy to see why: The photos above were taken at 9 a.m. when the flower was still in the shade. In the images below, taken at 10 a.m., it’s sidelit by the sun: Echinopsis flowers are notoriously short-lived. ‘Flying Saucer’ is no exception. This is what the flower looked like at 4 p.m.: By the next morning, the flower had collapsed completely: As they say, the higher they fly, the harder t...

Part 1 of my snapshots from Germany was all about nature: fields, forests, and the like. Part 2 is about the human environment: photos taken in the town where I grew up and in neighboring villages. Even though time has marched on, there are still buildings dating back centuries. It boggles the mind to think that the town where I was raised was founded in 976, while the city in California were I now live was incorporated in 1917! View from my late cousin's property on the edge of the forest Downtown Hersbruck Road shot Old barn in a neighboring village Barn wall with tree trunks—not sure what they'll be used for Barn window Ivy-covered facade in another nearby village This dilapidated building is uninhabitable, but since it's under heritage protection, it cannot be torn down. It's so far gone that renovations would be cost-prohibitive, so it just sits there. This is a problem all over Germany. Same house from a different angle The old farmhouse across the street from my...