At the end of February, I visited the natural science museum, which I wrote about yesterday. There were so many interesting things to see and learn about, but there was a greenhouse next to the museum as well, offering a lot of cute cacti to see.
For those of you who don't know, I live in a country where (in theory) there are four seasons and winter can be (or used to be) harsh, temperatures going as low as -20°C, -30°C. Cacti are not designed to resist to those temperatures, this is why cacti are indoor plant here and most people only have a few at home. Lack of space has a saying in how large, or small your collection is.
Although semi-desert cacti may be exposed to high light levels in the wild, they may still need some shading when subjected to the higher light levels and temperatures of a greenhouse in summer. Allowing the temperature to rise above 32 °C (90 °F) is not recommended. The minimum winter temperature required depends very much on the species of cactus involved. For a mixed collection, a minimum temperature of between 5 °C (41 °F) and 10 °C (50 °F) is often suggested, except for cold-sensitive genera such as Melocactus and Discocactus. Some cacti, particularly those from the high Andes, are fully frost-hardy when kept dry (e.g. Rebutia minuscula survives temperatures down to −9 °C (16 °F) in cultivation) and may flower better when exposed to a period of cold. source
Posting on Hive has it's advantages, always makes me learn something new and today I've learnt that the Rebutia minuscula survives temperatures down to −9 °C. I had no idea that there are cacti that can survive this type of cold. However, unfortunately we need more resistant ones because winter is way colder than -9°C here. This is why the museum set this lovely greenhouse up.
Most likely I've mentioned before, that I used to have a nice collection of small cacti and succulents when I was in high school. The truth is, I can't remember what's happened to those plants, but up until 2021, I had none. In 2021 I bought myself a cactus. Have been eyeing the cacti collection in each nursery for ages, planning to buy one, but never did, till 2021.
Cacti are known to survive on very little water and i know people opting fr cactus just because they say these thorny plants don't need much care. It's good when you don't have to spend much time with them, but then again, why do you need them, if you don't want to care for them, right?
The variety of cacti the greenhouse offers is very wide and even though at first glance, when you step in, you feel like you want them all, after a few minutes, reality kicks in and you know you can't have them all. This is when you start to have a better look at the collection and start to select the ones you'd like to have. At least that's what I did and ended up selecting the white one on the photo above.
I've never had one like that and find it more interesting than the others, due to that white coat, which is made up of spikes. I've seen small ones at the nursery and maybe my next one will be one of those.
These were smaller ones and many of them were of the same type, but that doesn't mean they were less attractive.
Who would resist those little pink cuties? I don't like pink in particular, but when it comes to flowers, I'm ok with it.
This one unfortunately proves they don't stay white, just the top. The rest, the older part becomes darker.
These are all of the same species, although they don't look the same.
The scenery changed here, instead of cacti, they had a lot of succulents, of all sizes.
This was the middle row with the tallest cacti of the collection. These reminded me of movies filmed in Mexico or Arizona. Some of them can grow pretty big.
And here's one I've never seen in my life. It's not the usual cactus type people know. It's an Astrophytum myriostigma.
Astrophytum myriostigma, the bishop's cap cactus, bishop's hat or bishop's miter cactus, is a species of cactus native to the highlands of northeastern and central Mexico. source
Bishop's cap cactus sounds just as interesting as it looks and I'd love to have one, exactly because it's very different.
This one looked like me on a bad hair day :)
This was the first cactus collection of this size I've seen, but also hope it wasn't the last. There are so many species out there, it would be nice to see more one day.
If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:
