Ariocarpus living rocks of Mexico

[tonic]

Ariocarpus living rocks of Mexico

I found this site interesting and imformative, some great pics and some good links too.

Like this one: KAKTUSY Special 2 - Ariocarpus

Also do many people here grow these amazing cacti? What species do you grow and what are your favourite species? What is your take on the cultivation of them? Alot of different have alot of different ideas about growing them.

EDIT: Another page on Ariocarpus spp. here, nice pics, it's in German though. Die Gattung Ariocarpus

There should be a translated form of this site available by PDF shortly.

And another that is also being translated Ariocarpus.net, which looks to have some hypocotyl grafting info and some good cultivation tips, photos etc.

Stay tuned.

Edited February 3, 2008 by Phosphene_Dream

[Teotzlcoatl]

Cool!

I love "Peyotes"!

[PoC]

Nice link. I bookmarked it. Lots of cool ariocarpus pictures!

[Hellonasty]

Have you seen this one >Ariocarpus:

I can't read much of it but the pics are simply stunning

Edited January 20, 2008 by Hellonasty

[tonic]

Damn! Wish I could read that page, great pics though. Thanks for posting that link.

If anyone else knows any good links to info and/or pics for Ariocarpus spp. please post them here in this thread.

[Hellonasty]

Damn! Wish I could read that page, great pics though. Thanks for posting that link.

If anyone else knows any good links to info and/or pics for Ariocarpus spp. please post them here in this thread.

Yeah no dramas. I made a typo in my post meant to say CAN'T read I will fix it.

[kadakuda]

good sites...i am at a loss for reading it as well

anyone here tried crossing any of them? i have not tried ariocarpus crosses too much, but thought it would be fun.

I will say this about growing them....they do not do very good in tropical/high humidity countries.....i had a *LOT* die from rot this last typhoon season....it was very very bad...i watered them ZERO and kept them under cover but the humidity (which you can literally cut with a knife lol) and they still rotted if your not in a dry country (or even a normal country) use a green house....

i thought that some pics here at this site may be nice.

[trucha]

Sacred Succulents has had a good bit of success crossing assorted Ariocarpus species. I don't know what has not worked for them but I believe that they have produced at least a handful of successes. I think they planted the resulting seeds more often then they have sold them.

They have used Pereskiopsis as a stock to get the seedlings up in size faster prior to regrafting onto a larger columnar stock.

[Teotzlcoatl]

Dude why are those so TALL????

How old are they?

They were grafted right?

Edited January 24, 2008 by Teotz'

[kadakuda]

interesting, i have sen on the net and in conversation of hybrids, but i have yet to get my own to work lol. keep trying i guess.

teotz only the bottom one is grafted, the others are just really old seed grown plants in good conditions...in the wild they will likely be much smaller and flatter...but in the greenhouse they got all the benefits of a rich mommy and daddy lol! yours, in time, will look like these some day too. i wish i could say i grew these from seed, but i did not sow them....im not that old

[Teotzlcoatl]

They must be like 30-50 years old!

They are huge!

I've just never seen Ariocarpus like that...

What species are they?

Edited January 25, 2008 by Teotz'

[Ace]

What species are they?

I always get them ones confused, but they are either confusus, retusus or furfuraceus, I think. Find a good website with lots of pics (try Koehres or similar) and try to ID them yourself. I find that their names stick better if I ID them myself. Go look on google image search - I just did and it would appear that furfuraceus looks to be the appropriate label. Always double check with a good cacti website (such as Koehres) to be sure as google will sometimes pull up others which have been mislabelled.

[tonic]

The ones witht the smooth tubercles look like A. retusus var. retusus, or forms/varietas thereof. The ones with the slight fissures on the tubercles look like A. retusus var. furfuraceus also looks like a grafted A. fissuratus var. lloydii next to the main gaft in the last pic, theses are amongst my favourite Ariocarpus.

Those are enormous Arios kada. Are they in your collection? Amazing specimens.

[kadakuda]

some are a friends and some of those were mine but died in the typhoons last year those are all CV's with which i have no clue the english name...i can try and google the mandarin names i have and see if i can get an english one...many of my cacti i label in chinese, cause thats the language here

[Hellonasty]

Nice arios Kada. Lets see some other members arios ?

[tonic]

I might be inclined to take a few pics soon and post them here, I am about to get two more into the collection. It will have to wait till I get my camera happening again though.

Would love to see some other members pics too.

[Teotzlcoatl]

Here's my A. fissuratus

It's 10 years old.

[kadakuda]

thats a damn nice addition to any collection....i have to admit, i have bought more since my devastating losses this last summer

arios are just too cool!

[incognito]

with seed germination, the seedlings should be kept in full humidty a hell of a lot longer than lophs iove found.

in fact up to 12 months in full humidity. all of my losses have occured in the hardening of stage, they really drop like flys.

kinda makes sense when u see their photos in nature, mostgrow up from withing rockcrevices where it would be naturally humid until the plant pokes its head up out of the crevice.

i have seedlings under full humidity after 7 months, and are green and vital, and twice the size of seedlings i hardened of 6 monthsago at only 3 months of age, which areslowly dying of, aside from the ones ive succesfully grafted (about 5 out of 50!)

thing is, once uve hardened of u cant go back to full humidity or they rot.

pointy is, keep ur seedlings under full humidity for at least 6 months.

what has worked for me only.

[tonic]

Thanks for the input jono. That's some excellent advice too. I was waiting for you to get involved in this thread as I know you are an ario grower and propagator.

I have also heard from other sources that they require much more humidity than other cacti (and reading your posts about it), it seems kinda ironic that after they are growing on they require an increasingly dry atmosphere and potting media.

On media, what sort do you use jono? And everyone else for that matter. I am still looking for my perfect mix, so far my mix contains a fair amount of course mineral content with a much smaller organic matter ratio.

....i have to admit, i have bought more since my devastating losses this last summer

arios are just too cool!

They are certainly are an addictive cacti once you start getting into growing them kada. Not sure what it is, for me I guess it's the amazing and sometimes bizzare appearance as they looks far removed from most other forms of cacti, also the rariety of them and the hunt to aquire them into the collection. Watching their slow growth is another added interest for me as you get to know the plant intimately over a long period of time.

The prices can be a bit steep, but really worth every cent in some cases.

Edited January 28, 2008 by Phosphene_Dream

[Hellonasty]

Phos,

For propagating arios I use: 1/3 organic potting mix (searls seed raising)

1/3 Washed River sand.

1/3 porus rock 1-3mm, any will do. the more porus the more free draining the mix. I use landscaping sand which is mixed rocks between 1 & 3mm.

Once they are stablished I use a bit less organic. I do most of it by eye so the amounts are not perfect. I probly use a little less rock than 1/3.

Arios are pretty hard to graft too. I find you need high but not too high humidity for at least 7days. I find 10days is beter but you have got to be careful because too high H and they rot where the graft is taking. I have found letting them dry out a little by using a light wind either fan or natural, around the sixth day will allow me to keep them humid for 10days.

[Ace]

Arios are pretty hard to graft

I have found that they are fairly easy to graft onto peres. I have grafted A. fissuratus v. fissuratus, A. trigonus and A. kotscoubeyanus all very successfully with no problems (all have put out significant amounts of growth over the past month or so - all around the size of a small marble). I have only had trouble with slightly dehydrated A. fissuratus v. loydii, which I have lost 2 or 3 seedlings to dehydration/poor joining of the scion to the stock. With time I hope to get a few of each type within the genus onto peres, but that will still be a while away yet. I have found that the peres tend to shoot quite excessively (similar to lophies I suppose), in comparison to trich seedling>peres grafts. I would think that this is due to the slow growing nature of arios/lophs compared to the relatively fast trichs.

What species do you grow and what are your favourite species?

I have tried growing the above from seed, as well as A. retusus (different forms), but they did very poorly (possibly poor potting mix, mould, or lack of humidity [even though they were zip sealed like all my bubs]). I found v. loydii to be rather difficult too, possibly due to the above factors, as well as maybe older/lower quality seed.

My favourite species would have to be A. fissuratus and A. kotschoubeyanus. Both are just beautiful in the wild and in cultivation. I love when Phosphene posts because I get to have a gander at that beautiful hand drawn A. fissuratus in his signature block I really wish I had the skill to draw that well!

[kadakuda]

what is your success with larger scions onto more permanent stocks? like hylocereus, trichs, myrtles etc...mine were sort of hit or miss. most took but some rotted after from too high humidity.

[Ace]

Sorry Kada, no attempts made there. Only peres for me (at this point in time) From the snippets that I've read, seedlings tend to graft better than mature plants (or re-grafts), so it might be best to go straight from seedling to a trich and miss the peres step, if possible. Though, I can see that being rather fiddly as many people have had probs doing loph grafts in this manner.