Spring awakening in the coldhouse

All of the photos in this post were taken at the beginning of April to illustrate some of the spring activity in my coldhouse. The plants have been kept dormant all through winter and received their first drink of water only a few days before these pictures were shot.


Flowering Lophophora williamsii (El Huizache, San Luis Potosí)

The first plant I want to show off is a flowering Lophophora williamsii grown from seed originating from the El Huizache, San Luis Potosí, Mexico population (the population Anderson assigned as the neotype for the species). These plants are from a more southerly location than the ones I'm usually growing and I'm happy to see they are coping so well with the cold conditions during winter. I was getting used to thinking of all L. williamsii varieties as self-fertile but according to the Cactus Conservation Institute, greenhouse breeding experiments by Bohata and colleagues in the Czech Republic and by Köhres in Germany have shown that plants from the El Huizache population are self-sterile and therefore obligate outcrossers (leading one to suspect a great deal of genetic diversity within plants from this population – in contrast to the self-fertile populations that have little to no genetic diversity among individuals as they outcross very little).


Lophophora williamsii (El Huizache) flower with long style

The flowers of the El Huizache plants also seem to have a very long style that raises the stigma well above the stamens, making it hard, if not impossible, for the plants to reproduce without the help of a pollinator.


Bumble bee having fun with a Lophophora williamsii flower

Speaking of pollinators a bumble bee visited while I took these pictures – unfortunately only this one Lophophora flowered at the time making it impossible for the bee to fertilize the plant. The bumble bees that are active in early spring are huge; I don't know much about bees but am told that these large slow individuals are queen bees looking for nectar and pollen to feed their newly hatched brood.


Lophophora williamsii (SB 854; Starr Co, Texas) with fresh fruit

One of the Lophophora williamsii (SB 854; Starr Co, Texas) plants that I recently repotted has spawned a fruit. This variety of Lophophora williamsii is self-fertile to an extent where it happily sets seed if you just shake the flower a bit.


Flowering Acharagma roseana (LX 578; Ramon Arizpe, Coahuila)

My Acharagma roseana plants (LX 578; Ramon Arizpe, Coahuila - “Ramon” should probably read “Ramos” but I'll stick to the information from the vendors seed list) are coming of age. The plants were started from seed 4 years ago and are all ready to flower, displaying a wealth of flower buds. Only one, shown in the picture above, flowered when I took the pictures. Unfortunately it will be a while before I can visit my summerhouse (and coldhouse) again – I hope at least a few of the flowers will be saved for then. My Echinocereus reichenbachii plants are also growing a multitude of buds, getting ready for a flower fest I would hate to miss.


Frost damaged Matucana madisoniorum

Until now I have focused entirely on the success stories but a few of my plants didn't like being without heat during winter. My Matucana madisoniorum definitely didn't like the cold conditions (even being wrapped in multiple layers of horticultural fleece). The plant is heavily marked by the experience but survives.

I also lost a few plants: a couple of Carnegia gigantea (saguaro cactus), a Cylindropuntia bigelovii (teddy-bear cholla), and a Cylindropuntia tunicata (thistle cholla); I managed to save cuttings of the chollas though. These plants were kept out on the terrace all summer and I probably left them out for too long, exposing them to the autumn storms so the plants were not able to dry out completely before winter. I'm especially sad about the Carnegia gigantea plants as they were great specimens and are now completely reduced to mush.

Flowering Matucana madisoniorum

I was sorting out my photos and found a few pictures of plants that flowered this summer.


Flowering Matucana madisoniorum

This Matucana madisoniorum plant was bought earlier in the summer from Kakteen-Haage to experiment with growing it in my coldhouse. The species is said to be pretty cold-tender so the chances for survival are probably not the best - it would be sad, though, not to see it display its beautiful orange-red flower again.


Flowering Matucana madisoniorum – close-up

The species was originally described as Borzicactus madisoniorum by Hutchison in the journal of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America (vol 35 (6), pp. 167-172) and later transferred to the genus Matucana. The description was accompanied by the plate below.


Plate description: Borzicactus madisoniorum. Composite plate by May Bios, 1958, from different plants under cultivation, all of the type collection. 1, 2. Apical views of spiny and spineless plants. 3. Lateral view of flower. 4. Apical view of flower. 5. Longitudinal section of flower. 6. Stigma. 7. Funicles. 8. Ripe fruit. 9. Dried fruit. 10. Lateral view of seed. 11. Bottom view of seed. 12. Lateral view of seed, the dotted lines showing the extent of invagination of the hilum. 1-5, 8, 9, natural size. 6, x 4.5.10, 11, x 70. 7, greatly enlarged.

Matucana madisoniorum has its natural habitat in Amazonas, Peru with a very limited distribution, it has been heavily collected and faces an unknown future in the wild.