Cacti and Succulents

Some of the cacti are flowering right now. One of them I am sure what it is, but the other two I am not sure what varieties they are. The Agave attenuata plants grow along the driveway. All of these are from our new place.

Mammilaria hahniana :

Transplanting Kalanchoe Copper and Silver Spoon

My favourite Kalanchoe plants are Kalanchoe orgyalis (Copper Spoon) and K. hildebrandtii (Silver Sppon). These two plants were brought from our old place, and I just had time to transplant them in the tiny front garden in our new place.

Kalanchoe hildebrantii (Silver Spoon)

This one was still in the pot. It has been growing very well.

After transplnting:

Kalanchoe orgyalis (Copper Spoon) : After over one year left in the pot, it has grown taller and a little bit lanky. I will wait to see what is going to happen after transplanting. If it is still leggy, I have to trim it hard to promote new leaves.

Surprise Cacti

We sold our old home and bought another house about 30 km away. The vendor left us with a collection of cacti grown in a birdbath. I never good in growing cacti before. They all ended up died. So now with these cacti, I have to be careful not to over water.

The collection consists of a small Opuntia, Mammilaria hahniana, Rebutia, Echinopsis, an unknown cactus and miniature aloe. The birdbath is relatively shallow and it seems that the growing media is mainly consists of pebbles.

Recently to my surprise some of the cactus plants grew beautiful flowers.

Mammilaria hahniana or kown as old woman/ old lady cactus. It grows flowers around the top to form a circle that looks like a crown.

Succulent Plants – Fruits

Other than the dragon fruit, few other succulent plants also have some fruits.

Ripe Dragon Fruit – Rootless Stem

If your dragon fruit tree bears many fruits, and one of the stem is broken, you may not be bothered. However, if it is the first and the only one, you want to save it. It was what I did and the fruit kept on growing to ripeness. It is much smaller and thinner though.

Dragon Fruit Update

The broken stem with a budding fruit seems to survive. The stem is still green and firm, not sure if roots have started to grow, but the fruit seems to develop. It is much smaller and less rounder than it is supposed to be. Since about three days ago, the stunted fruit has started to change colour. Kind of yellow first and now it is getting more red. Is it getting ripe, or an early sign of wilting? I will not pick the fruit until it is really red.

Dragon Fruit Disaster

Broken off stem

Just as we were all very happy to have a dragon fruit growing for the very first time, disaster happened. The stem with the baby fruit was broken off. How did it happen? Not very sure, it could be the possum climbed on it last night. We have few possums in the back yard. The plant itself actually is not very healthy with many parts rotted every winter time. Perhaps the stem joint was not strong enough and it snapped broken.

Hand Pollinating Dragon Fruit

It was a big surprise that our Dragon Fruit (Hylocereus sp.) has finally had one flower bud. The bud grew very fast and very large. Just before it opened last night, the swollen flower bud was around 40 cm long (including the stem). It was twice the size of the biggest Epiphyllum flowers that we have.

Eh… Buah Naga Berbunga

Beberapa hari yang lalu saya memeriksa tanaman Buah Naga (Dragon Fruit – Hylocereus undatus/putih atau H. polyrhizus/merah) dengan maksud akan melepaskannya dari tiang tempatnya merambat. Tanaman ini dibeli awal tahun 2012 dan setiap musim dingin mengalami pembusukan, jadi tak begitu sehat dan belum pernah berbunga sebelumnya. Rupanya jenis yang kami punya tidak tahan hawa dingin. Tanaman buah naga ini tak bisa dipindahkan karena diikat/dirambatkan pada tiang. Maksud hati ingin melepaskannya dan memotong bagian yang terlihat hijau dan sehat untuk ditanam kembali serta ditempatkan di lokasi yang lebih ternaung. Eh…. kaget juga, ternyata ada satu kuncup bunga yang mampu tumbuh. Waktu pertama kali melihat kuncup bunga itu masih belum kelihatannya tangkainya, beberapa hari kemudian kuncup semakin tumbuh besar memanjang dan mulai terlihat tangkai bunganya.

Nopalxochia phyllanthoides

From all our orchid cacti, this one is my favourite. The flowers are small but prolific and they look very pretty even when still in bud form. The tiny buds will slowly develop into very attractive half opened buds, though they are still not fully developed. the soft pink colour make them look very beautiful to look at. Then after many weeks, the cute soft pink buds will eventually open into fully mature blooms.

Pretty flower buds:

Compared to the other orchids cacti, Nopalxochia  phyllanthoides have long lasting blooms. While many others with magnificently large blooms are short live, from 1 to 3 days, this smaller orchid cactus will have a prolific display of the prettiest blooms from the start in bud forms right into a fully open flowers, and this can take weeks to enjoy.