Snowfella

Lets bring this one back to life again. Work in a distribution center for one of the big 2 down here and has now for near 11 years. Started out as a picker/packer in our ambient section and later moved over to coldstorage, nowadays run the despatch side of things making sure the trucks get loaded on time and have to answer a billion phonecalls a week regarding missing pallets of stock. The amount we loose a week could likely feed a small country town without problem! Can't say I jump out of bed every morning and can't wait to get to work but it pays the bills, half and half thinking about tossing in the stressy office job and going back on the floor again! Also do some limited freelance work as a 3D modeler for the computer games industry, "worked" for the same upstart studio for years now unpaid pending the release of a finished product. Time will tell what will come from that. As for work history, can't say it's checkered but I've gone through a fair few different ones over the years, most of them being temp summer jobs. Swede by birth and with the short summers up north everyone wants their holidays at the same time, combined with a 10 week school summer break it gives schoolkids a great oportunity to get some temp jobs over summer. Can't say the first "job" was a 100% voluntary though as with mandatory army service I was drafted and 3 days after graduating year 12 I sat my ass down on the buss. Spent 11 months as a transport squadleader running an infantry refuelling squad up north in Sweden before getting placed into the wartime reserves. Then I temped over summer in a local steelmills water treatment plant for 10 weeks before doing a TAFE cource to remedy some substandard grades in order to get into uni. Fixed the grades up and applied for a computer science cource, at the same time though I also applied for another time limited job. Got accepted for both and picked the one I wanted most, luckily the uni let me defer my start by a year so I still kept my place there. The job I wanted was a spot in Sweden's peacekeeping force in Bosnia, so it was once again back in uniform, spent 7 months deployed again in a transport squad running the camps refuelling station. Then another temp summer job for the local council mowing lawns before a year of uni where I figured out I really didn't want to spend the rest of my days behind a desk (guess what I'm driving nowadays!) Between uni terms I again temped, this time as a steelmill floor worker. Doing edge sharpening and tempering of strip steel. Before going back for a second term at uni I instead opted to drop out and see what else I could find, luckily my old boss was more then happy to take me back this time on a permanent basis. Worked there for a few years before I took the biggest step of my life, quit my job, sold of all but a few suitcases worth of clothes and some books, waved bye to family and friends to move down to Sydney to be with a woman I'd met through Mirc.

Could well be mate. Only thing I know of it's origin is that it's a Collectors Corner plant and they sell them on their Ebay directory as Trichocereus scopulicolis, never seen small ones for sale through Hamiltons although I do know they have one planted in their displaygarden and also have atleast one larger one for sale....it's been there for a year now though without any takers.

Something about the ribs and areoles scream Thelocactus to me. T. rinconensis?

Just wait till you nuke it with some direct sunlight and it goes bright reddish!

I've tried that at some of my local stores and just been met with the deer in headlights look. They just have no clue and couldn't care less about their cactii stock. Bunnings is just to big and whatever they make in cactii sales is just a drop in the ocean for them. Funny enough even some dedicated nurseries around my area just couldn't care less. This is what I found on the cactii bench at the Bonnyrigg Garden center a few weeks back, they get their shippments from Collectors Corner down in Melbourne.

It's Lowes mate, not Home Depot ;)

Sowed a load of self harvested Melocactii seeds well over a year ago, lots germinated withing a fortnight but I'm still getting new green little blobs showing up now and then. Harvested another 30 or so seedpods from the same plant this fall that I have no clue what to do with,

hehehe...I can't by contract say anything bad about woolies, work there and have had to sign their code of conduct that includes a clause that say they tolerate no negative comments either printed or online. But yeah, it's plain stupid to leave proper genus/species labels out of the cactii sold at masters when just about all other plants have proper labels.

Guess it must vary from Masters store to Masters store, I went to the Gregory Hills store in Sydney's west on Thursday and was horrified over what I found. Their whole cactii bench was one crawling mess of regular and spine mealies, no way I would buy anything from there! Snagged just one photo of the mess but it ought to tell the whole story! Bit of a shock as I've seen the plants Hamiltons select for the Masters stores and it seems to be the choice specimens, generally larger and healthier than their regular stock. Edit: as for pots and labeling: the pot colour and labels are Masters request according to staff at Hamiltons, in their wisdom they opted to get labels without any genus or species info...just the stupid "Ye Haw" label.

Neither of those 2 are Hamiltons plants though, those labels and black pots means they are Collectors corner/paradiso plants. 1st I'd call Browningia hertlingiana.

T. hexaedrophorus hardly ever have centrals though asfar as I've read about it. I'd be more inclined to think it's a T. bicolour of some variety. Gorgeous plants too btw!

Alright, I've had a look in Andersson's "The cactus family" and I suspect plant #5 isn't Austrocactus Spiniflorus but rather some kind of Cereus. Mine is just to large in size to fit in with the description, probably should of included some size reference to the photo. In the photo it's planted in a 15cm pot and it's now near a foot tall and continues to grow in a columnar fashion. Will have to see what it becomes and it and most of the other plants in these photos are headed in the ground come spring, finalised my plans for another outdoors bed the other day and I'll be getting the missing bits and pieces hopefully over the coming days.

Figured I'd toss these 2 up here as no other forums seem to be able to make sence out of them. Old one, been in the ground for a year now and not made much of a headway. Recen't photo And not long after I planted it out over a year ago. And the recent one, purchased just the other week in a 7cm pot.

Cheers EG! I'll try to take in all that info when i get back home from work this afternoon, just hope they are all frost proof as I'm having the first real frost this winter right now. Another thing about Hamiltons aswell is that it generally is up to whoever is potting up the seedlings to grab the appropriate label and they are far from right all the time. Found many a miss labeled Mammillaria in their poly tunnels.

I'd guess the first one is an Austrocylindropuntia pachypus, possibly somewhat crested at the top.

They indeed are slow, then again we have had a horrid summer in the Sydney area. Nothing really grew well apart from my C. peruvians that went nuts, guess nothing can stop one of them though. Growth comparison between the C. peruvians and the top on in this thread. May last year, C. peruvians had just been moved into that spot. The Tricho whever it is is the little green blob infront of the center rock. March this year. The Tricho still infront of the same rock but I was forced to take a step or 2 back to get the peruvians fully in frame.

Alright, here's shots of the ones that came labeled from Hamiltons. Mind you they are still but seedlings to might be hard to lock down to a specific species. 2 different ones with T. pasacana labels. Look very different to my eyes. 2 with T. terscheckii labels. And 2 T. candicans labeled plants And another unlabeled one aswell.

Yup, Hamiltons stock indeed. And both came with a very informative "cactus" label! Lol Do have the other 3 varieties that came with labels but these 2 look different from them. Might grab some more photos of em when i get home from work.

Browningia hertlingiana I think.

Don't think that's a Fero, I'd be more inclined to think it's a Parodia mammulosa ssp submammulosa

It was bought as an unlabeled 10cm seedling from a general nursery, pretty sure of the seedling bit as it had no clear "cut" surface underground as I potted it out. The M. Geometrizans label has come from 2 other forums, first as an initial ID and a second after I questioned that ID due to it's heavy spines. So it's not a 100% sure ID by the looks of things. It did however start out with lots weaker spines and only put on heavy ones after having been planted out in a real sunny, warm spot in the yard.

6 ribs at the most, centrals near 7cm but the radials match in at just a cm or so.

To strong? Those look weak compared to mine Old photos, from near well over a year ago.

I'd guess M. geometrizans. Got mine not much bigger than that 2 years ago and it's now pushing 70cm's tall with several arms, even had to lop one arm off as it was getting so heavy it was pulling the main stem over. They grow like crazy in the ground down here in the Sydney area. Hoping for flowers come springtime!

MIght add here that as of the other week Hamiltons doesn't have any Loph's for sale, probably not permanently but might take a while before they have them again. Reason being that someone went in during the night a week or so ago and lifted the whole cage, staff thinks it might be connected with 2 somewhat shady looking characters that were there a day or so in advance and only had interest in the Loph's.