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dionysus

local botanical gardens

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today i thought i would go down to the botanical gardens to see if any cacti were in bloom, and i was pretty disapointed with what i saw. i had just missed there enormous trichocereus spachianus flowers but there werdermannianus had bloomed last night it looked like and there lone globular echinopsis and lone opuntia sp. were flowering along with some barrel cactus.

what i was disapointed with, though, was the poor state of health a lot of the cacti were in including the opuntia having severe black rot on several limbs, most columnar echinopsis/trichocereus including the flowering werd. and some cuzcos, a pc pach, TBM and some terschekiis were all a horrible sickly yellow colour and had pretty bad damage over a lot of them and the lone non pc pach or peruvianus they used to have looks to have been stolen for drug use by someone, which got me down.

another thing i was a little disapointed in was the diversity of there plants, pretty much all being golden barrel cactus or T.terschekii, even though they have what seems a beautifally landscaped place for a great cacti collction.

when i arrived home, i emailed them and informed them of my slight disapointment and made a few recomendations and even offered to volunteer there to look after them myself and source some more diverse cacti for them incuding really spiny/impassable ones to surround any potentially stolen and abused cacti from theft. i hope they let me volunteer, i see a lot of potential from there space.

dionysus

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We have the same here, they might be healthy-ish looking but they definitely need to get a little bit more range, they only have the one T. terschekii other then that everything else is your everyday cacti.. They have for some reason an awsome range of Carnivorous Plants, maybe depends on what they owners/workers favours.

Any who good luck Dion if you volunteer why would they say no to free working hand let alone someone who may know a thing or two about what they are doing.

Have fun!

Chef

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A tbm at a public garden? That in itself is unusual afaic, from what you have mentioned it seems they have a reasonable variety of echinopsis(trich) albeit unhealthy.

the lone non pc pach or peruvianus they used to have looks to have been stolen for drug use by someone, which got me down.

Why do you say that? i think it would be hard to judge the intention of use from how it has been cut down? Is the plant still there or has it gone entirely? If the other plants are in such terrible shape then it may have succumb to rot and been removed.

I hope they take you up on the offer of volunteering, well done mate, some cactus gardens in public spaces i have seen are not well cared for at all and need ppl such as yourself that would take the time to give them what they need just for the love of doing it!

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at least you guys have cactus! :P They just put names on our local bush in our botanical garden :( I hope they take you up on your offer as they sound like they are in pretty bad shape

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well, the gardens were first started in the 1800s with a large herbarium (now gone) and at that time they planted some giant redwoods which are now pretty giant (although no where near the size of those american monsters) and the rest of the gardens are fantastic in both health and range. their salvia garden is particularly good, with pretty well every known cultivar/species in the garden somewhere (apart from divinorium of course) the aroma on a warm calm day is amazing. i just think cacti isn't a big interest for anyone currently employed there, as they do do a lot of good for everything else. the one thing they don't have though is carnivorous plants chef_, that would be a cool collection.

i agree PD when you say it seems they have a good range of echinopsis, because they pretty well do (although, only of columnar types), but they have the space to have more. from memory, at the moment they have 2 austrocylindropuntia vestia, 2 cereus peruvianus, 1 opuntia macriebtra, 1 Werdermannianus, 2 cuzcoensis, 2 pachanoi, 1 spachiana, 1 TBM and 1 globular echnipsis which is great, but then they have 15-25 golden barrel cactus (not even variating for the occasional red barrel or something...) and 10-15 terschekii. the amount of terschekiis and barrels compaired to everything else seems to highlight visually how much more could be there. especially considering near by there is a cacti-only nursery that sells almost anything imaginable apart from trichs.

i say i think that particular cacti was stolen for drugs as i think i remember reading a local paper article about it, and it was just snapped near the base (now putting up some pups luckily) and taken. also a cereus peruvianus monstrose was taken by the same people aswell as nearly killing their really young red leaf catha edulis plant (that got me really worried, i didn't want that newspaper article to make more kids go in there looking to steal but they still have their catha and it is looking pretty healthy these days so i guess all is good)

i just really want to help them bring their cacti section up to the awesome standard the rest of their garden is in. they are the first thing you see when you walk in (albeit a slight distance away) and i reckon it would make the place if they too were spectacular.

lol @ bush turkey, school excursions down to see the local bush must be enthralling for the kiddies

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