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Evil Genius

Your first cactus?

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Hi Guys, what was your first cactus? I just recognized that eventhough i have many cacti, i still know which one i got first. You´ll never forget the first one! My first cactus was a Gymnocalycium Horstii and i bought it in our small town nursery for about 5 Euro. I chose this one because i wanted to buy a Loph but as i didnt know how they look i ended up with the Gymnocalycium. Last week i rediscovered it between some other old cacti. In the first few months after the purchase i almost killed it because i put it on top of the heater but somehow it survived and now it looks great again. bye Eg

Edited by Evil Genius

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Oh jeez, this is going back a while now - when I was knee-high to a grasshopper (about 8 years old) I went to a local market and picked up what I believe was some type of T. spachanius (though it is a much smaller one that clumps very rapidly - not entirely sure on i.d.). Though I'm sure I have had a couple others - my dad and his dad used to collect cacti too (not sure if there was any fun ones, not in my recollection - but they had a couple crestate mammillarias among a few other common ones). I remember we always had a zygo or two around the house, though they never really interested me much.

Since my re-found interest in cacti (about 2 years ago) I think my first (other than a couple cuttings from that above mentioned spach-type) was probably a cutting or two of t. pachanoi. Though I have picked up so many common ones inbetween it makes things difficult to remember... Great thread tho!

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My grandfather had a shit load of Cereus Validus (sp?) that as a noob I thought were pedro. That was some years ago now but I still have the original cutting which has 4 ribs. The only reason I am keeping it is that my pop got badly burnt.............They don't fuck around at the crematorium!

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I was lucky enough to be introduced into the obsession having been given a pachanoi as my first cactus... :P

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first ones were really a Pachanoi for $15 from a gardening shop. I still believe it's a pachanoi even though about 10-15cm of it from the base is completely rounded with no ribs (due to lack of light I think). A nice Bridgesii, short spined Peruvianus were my other cacti I got, around the same time as well as a Trich Scopulicolus which I bought from Bunnings, believing it was a Pachanoi, lol. Also got a small Astrophytum myriostigma from Bunnings.

Edited by SaBReT00tH

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My first cactus was an Opuntia spp. when I was like 10, bastard thing was a glochid fountain that turned me off cacti for years! :lol:

God I hate glochids.

After that was several seed grown T. pachanoi, then grew some T. peruvianus and terscheckii seed.

This is good timing because this morning I ordered my first Ariocarpus fissuratus seeds :)

T. bridgesii is on my list for my annual december seed order.

In regards to entheogenic cacti I am on a mission to grow nothing but seed grown plants, no established clones.

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Mine was a T. pach. Took turns growing it with my mom (bless her heart) before I finally got hungry :wink:

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Mine was a Melocactus sp. I still have. It finally started to grow a cephalum this season. I never thought it would be self-fertile.

~Michael~

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My first cacti from memory was a Trichocereus pachanoi cutting and I also bought a L. williamsii at the same time, which is now my mother graft and the pedro is my source for new pedro cuts and stocks. I think I have about 100 hundred cacti of various types ethno and non ethno, though haven't counted them, lots of new ones on the way via seeds. Love those cacti

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I popped my cherry with a bridgesii, a TBM, a pachanoi, a cordobensis & 2 lophs all came from T, sad to say I abused them all I lost the 2 cm loph & the TBM that year & the corbodensis bout 2 years later, still have the poor tortured bridge & pach & just gave away the surving loph to a member for their first loph, it had barely grown for me in almost 4 yr's, hopefully they will have better luck.

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My first was Oreocerues trolli?? (ID please), which Ive now had for probably 10 years, after about 8 years of neglect I recently nursed it back to health and it will b e my first grafting experiment.

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Damn Shruman! Sounds like we need to confiscate any other cacti in your 'care' :P Sad to hear about all your losses - but I hope you are still keeping up your attempts at becoming a fully-fledged cactoholic :wink:

(note to self - dont send rare cacti to Shruman... :unsure: haha :P)

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"Sad to hear about all your losses"

Im not, I learnt a lot from my losses, they were sacrificed for the greater good, thats what u get caring for cacti were temps get close to -20c & heavy frosts.

Yeah Im a pretty hard core cactiphile now, I got a caespitose that is older than me bout a month ago.

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-20C in northern NSW?? Holy sheet! I thought living an hour from the snow made life chilly - that is just ridiculous :o

Awesome work with the caespitose - that must be unreal looking after something older than you, and watching it reproduce and multiply (kinda like an uncle with a lot of girlfriends... :puke: lol - sorry that was a touch gross... :P)

Good to hear that you have learnt a lesson or two - unforunately I think we have all had some big losses, but the knowledge gained from them can be very rewarding and usually compensates the damages :)

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I can't remember which cacti I got first, but I remember my very first loss. It would have been one of the first cacti in my collection at around the age of 8. A teddy bear cactus (Opuntis microdasys) It succumb to mealybug. Fuckit, but I never loss another cacti too mealy ever again. I now have another Teaddy cactus that I got when I was about 9 and I just propagated several pups from it. I also still have a Borzicactus aureispinus that is about 19 years in my care and produces lots of fresh growth ever year and has been heavily propagated.

I went through a spell of disinterest for a long while during my teenage years and many of my original collection perished or were given away. Sum were found growingh in the bush after been thrown out and have now been repotted and saved also. I never could have guessed that coming here would have rekindled my interest in cacti so much and now my collection is mainly trichs, lophs, 100's of pere's, echinopsis and Astrophytum, with a few other special interest specimens and long time survivers scattered amongst them.

P.S. I also still have my cacti ID book that was bought for me as a birthday prezzy from my folks at about 10. It's called " The CACTUS Handbook" and is Authored by Erik Haustein.It is originally translated from a book "Der Kakteenfuhrer printed in Czechoslovakia. It has a few things of particular intesrest. In the book it has a small paragraph on Useful cacti. It goes on about edible fruit, building material, etc but also goes on to say " Numorous cacti contain a variety of alkaloids. The most famous of which is Lophophora williamsii, with Mescaline, which produces intoxication and hallusinations. Mescalin is also contained in many, but not all, Trichocereus. An effective heart stimulant is extracted from the stems of Selenicereus grandiflorus and used mainly in England and North America."

Edited by naja naja

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A tiny Tricocereus formosas.It 's big as a bowling ball now with dozens of pups.

it still hasn't flowered.

maybe next year

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Mine was a mam :wub: . If I still had her now she'd rival a basketball!

I've been a mam fan ever since :lol:

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Mine was a two pack when I was a lil tacker, one was one of those upright fishhook things and the other was an e.glauca from what I can work out... they were free, the first from a shop was one of those orange shooting star gymno/hylo grafts... these days I can't help but knock on the door of anyone with a decent spiky patch in the front yard and ask if I can have a chop here n there... lovely stuff :D my favourite all round is a C. forbesii I have that looks rabid... a truly ferocius looking individual with varying rib numbers and those thorns that you don't realise are in you til they hit bone :P I couldnt even begin to work out what I actually have already these days, and I accumulate new plants faster than I ID old ones, so I guess I never will!

VM

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I am embarrassed to say that the first time me and some friends heard of mescaline containing cacti, we went out and hacked some limbs off a Cereus, hoping it was a severely dehydrated Trich... :rolleyes: We got as far as boiling the liquid and having a few sips before finally accepting that it simply tasted like a very mild cucumber and was definitely not going to make us trip unless we left it lying around on the ground.

The first cactus I bought was a Myrtillocactus Geometrizans... like you EG, I was looking for a psychoactive cacti (Trichocereus, didn't like my chances of finding a Loph back then) and even though I knew it wasn't a Trich I bought it anyway because I thought it looked neat. After more searching and still no luck with the Pachs, I just kept buying cacti because I started to really like the different colors and shapes, especially when they were placed near each other in various arrangements... so sci-fi. Most of them are still surviving under my mother-in-law's negligent gaze back in Perth.

I never did find a Trichocereus in Perth, but when I moved to NZ a couple of years ago I was delighted to discover the San Pedro trade was vigorous, and I quickly fell into a habitual buying pattern which has gradually led me to a decent collection of various Trichs. I also stop at the local Bunnings or supermarket every now and then to stock up on non-active cacti, and am also trying to build a little collection in Perth via remote control... a quite stressful endeavor when Lophs and my family get together!

I better stop this rather mundane story now as I think my post is already longer than Vert's :)

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My first cactus was a Mammillaria elongata 'Cristata' aka the brain cactus.

It even came in a novelty ceramic skull, I'm sure you have all seen them.

This was ALONG time ago, thought it was pretty cool at the time :)

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this was my first cactus, i bought it in 2001 for 15 smackers. it was the only one i owned for a couple of years. it got rot a few years ago and i salvaged the very uppermost slice and grafted it on my second cactus, a scop, here it is earlier this year.

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funny what can happen to a normal kind of dude in 6 years :blink: ha ha :blink:

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Hehehe ferret I reckon!

My first cacti were a small pot of a few different unidentified Mams, they are still alive today (15 years! lol) mostly thanks to my Mum I guess, and the oldest one is about 15cm high and 10 odd cm in diameter.

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My first cacti came as a trio that I convinced my mum to buy for me at the royal easter show when I was about 6. From what I can remember One was a golden torch, one was a lithops and the other was a euphorbia (the type that's commonly sold as a totem pole cactus, with leaves on it).

I was living in bathurst back then. When they out grew their home on the windowsill my mum planted them outside where they thrived until winter came round.

The lithops was the first to go, then after snow settling for a few days the golden torch was extinguished :(

On the other hand, it seemed nothing could kill the euphorbia. It did so well that my mum got annoyed at how big it was and she cut it up and threw it over the embankment in our backyard. It retaliated by giving her a severe rash on her hands and forming a hedge! If it's still there I want to go back to my old house and get a cutting, that thing had such spirit.

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