13 December 2007
If you can give them enough root room, this happens
Posted by Stuart under: Cacti .
Another retrospective photo today to combat the gloom of the winter freeze we’re currently experiencing; my Opuntia pailana (as I bought it), or O. leucotricha as the NCL now has it, finally flowered for the first time back in mid-June. The plant was bought from the Abbey Brook nursery at the same time as my Cylindropuntia spinosior.
In a collection mostly made up of very small-growing plants, this thing is a giant, standing over 4ft tall. Its lower pads have now fused into a thick, woody trunk, as happens with so many of the larger-growing Opuntia species.
To get it to this size I’ve had it planted in a container that is approximately 2 1/2′ wide for the last few years. It could probably do with one last repotting, but the effort required may just be too much hassle…
Beneath it, on the greenhouse floor, you can just make out my plant of Pereskia bleo, before all its leaves fell off.