13 June 2008
Opuntia macrorhiza buds
Posted by Stuart under: Cacti .
It’s a treat for me whenever any opuntioid decides to flower. Until recently, I had had no success whatsoever in coercing any of them to do so.
There’s always the temptation to interpret new growth as a sign of blooming, as a new pad can look very like a bud. When my Opuntia macrorhiza was at the stage shown in the photo on the left, I was hopeful of flowers, but not counting any chickens.
However, my hopes have turned out to be entirely well-founded. Alongside a few new pads for this season, it has produced two buds. Not bad for a plant that lives outdoors all year round.
In the first of these two images, you can see clearly the difference between the bud, in the centre of the picture, and the new pad, which is far less pointed.
All I need now is for the local birds to leave the plant alone, as they pecked at it quite enthusiastically last year!
When I get my cactus bed built for the back garden, this is a plant, like Opuntia compressa (or O. humifusa if you prefer) that will sprawl all over the place rather than adopting any kind of upright habit. The blue pads are attractive enough in their own right, but a nice sprawling bush of pads in full flower will be quite a sight if it ever gets that far. I’ve even gone as far as to plant a cutting of O. compressa in my front garden, straight into ordinary garden soil, as an experiment. After seeing how wet tolerant a species it is, I’ve no doubts that it should be fine.
2 Comments so far...
Aiyana Says:
16 June 2008 at 4:01 am.
I’ve been fooled many times. This year I almost missed the flowers on an Opuntia sp. because it had never flowered and what I thought were pad buds turned out to be flowers. I should have known better as the new pads appeared in late Feb. and the flower buds in April. Now I know.
Aiyana
Aiyana Says:
17 June 2008 at 4:52 pm.
Thanks for the tip on the mini pet cactus. I wasn’t sure it would reroot if I took off all the roots, which is what I’ll have to do to remove the washer. If it makes it, it will be interesting to see if it’s your guess!
Thanks again,
Aiyana