Los Angeles Morning

Echinopsis x Los Angeles

The knowledge of yesterday's storm damage to my garden was on my mind as I arose this morning, until I looked outside and saw that there were ten fully opened flowers on my Echinopsis x Los Angeles. It certainly brightened my day. This is the second flush of the season for this cactus. The first produced two flowers, and they were quite large. These flowers are smaller, which is not unusual when there are a number of them.

The genus Echinopsis contains over 100 species of cacti from South America. In addition to the many species, there are hundreds of hybrids available in a multitude of colors. The common name for Echinopsis is Sea Urchin cactus or Easter lily cactus. When young, most are globular and as they age, they become columnar.

In Arizona, Echinopsis hybrids need light shade, but in other regions, most species can take full sun. Unlike many cacti, it has a large root system and likes a lot of room to grow, so it shouldn’t be potted in tight pots as with other cacti. I like to place my Echinopsis in my garden under the dappled light of a Palo Verde tree canopy. The ones I have planted there are doing very well.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Harry Johnson of Paramount, California created many of the Echinopsis hybrids that are available today. Echinopsis hybrids are very easy to grow. The pups produced will be identical to the parent, so if you find a hybrid that you like, you can be sure that the flowers that come from the pups will be true to the parent. It is also easy to grow Echinopsis hybrids from seed, but there is no guarantee that the flower will be the same. In fact, the flowers can be completely different in color and shape.

May Desert Garden

My garden is at its best right now--the Palo Verde trees and Mesquite trees are in full bloom. All the plants are lush, and many of my cactus plants continue to flower. The garden will stay this way until mid-June, and then it will start its dormant period in July through mid-September, our hottest time of the year. It's hard to belive that three years ago this month, this was a barren piece of land.

This dove and its female counterpart had the wherewithal to build a proper nest and they have been taking turns incubating the eggs for almost two weeks. Dove eggs hatch in 14 to 15 days, so I should be seeing some babies very soon. The male incubates by day and the female by night, so this is the male. Doves are notorious for building very poor nests as I noted in a previous post, so the fact that this nest is still intact is a small miracle!

The Chilean Mesquite tree flowers, called catkins, are in various stages of their life cycle. Soon, these will become Mesquite beans, suitable for drying and grinding into flour. Not that I do this--but many people in our region do it every year.

Echinopsis x 'Los Angeles, an early morning bloomer, produces numerous flowers that wilt within hours. I usually set my alarm to get up early enough to catch these flowers at their peak. Getting up early is no small feat for me, but a glimpse of these flowers makes it worth a couple of hours of lost sleep.

A Mammillaria sp. is flowering in the typical Mammillaria flower ring on the new growth. The tag got lost on this little cactus, and I won't hazard a guess as to its species.

This cactus was labeled as Echinopsis pentlandii longispinus, but now that it has flowered, I have to wonder. The buds look more like Gymnocalycium buds. However, the flowers open only at night, making it hard to get a good shot. I don't know of any species of Echinopsis or Gymnocalycium that bloom at night, so maybe it's another genus altogether.

An unidentified cactus (another lost tag!) that produces small flowers that are more green than yellow. The flowers are a nice contrast to the red spines.

This Sansevieria suffruticosa v. longituba flower stalk has sticky droplets all over the flowers and stalk. This is the first time I have ever seen the flowers. I have no idea if the droplets are normal--but I believe they are because the flower stalks on two of these plants have the same substance on them. Either it's normal or they both have the same problem!

Bryophyllum 'Crenatodaigremontianum' is making its little plantlets on the leaf margins. It is one of the "Mother of Thousands" plants that I keep potted to avoid having a crop of this stuff.

The Creosote bushes are in full bloom, with thousands of tiny sweat bees swarming around them. The small fuzzy seedpods form after the flowers are spent.