Anyone have an interest in O. polyacatha?

[Weiser]

Aaron
Yours are great too, especially the second photo. That is one big patch!!

I like the red one at the end too!! It got a name attached to it?

Looks like some more trades may be in order.

[Weiser]

Named Hybrids and selections abound. Here is a small parade of a few that have flowered for me.

Opuntia polyacantha Claude Barr hybrid I do not know the original name of this one. It has been passed from gardener to gardener to gardener etc.... for years and came to me unnamed. It looks like a possible hybrid with O. aurea. If anyone knows the name I'd like to know.

                                                 

                                                    'Utah Sunset'

                                                 

                                                   'Taylor's Red'

                                                 

                                                   'Snow Ball'

                                                 

                         One of the better purple padded ones  'Purple Desert'

                                                 

[Nold]

Nice.
I got one called 'Dark Knight', with purple pads, and went out to look for it, to take its picture, all shriveled up, but I couldn't find it. Maybe it's next door.
Weeding around, and in, them is no fun. One reason why I moved most of the tunas next door. Huge-spined forms of Opuntia macrorhiza, etc.
You really need a big wide-open space to grow the tuna types, like Kelly has at Timberline, in his display garden. Next door, they're growing in blue grama.
There's a funny story about 'Crystal Tide' and the Grapeseed sisters (who I think originally had the plant), but I can't tell it right. Maybe there's someone, somewhere, who can.

Bob

[Weiser]

Bob
Aaron and I are friends with LaMar Orton the owner of Plantasia Cactus Gardens, located in Twin Falls Idaho. Here is a link to pictures he has posted on his web sight of his display garden.
http://plantasiacactusgardens.com/Pictures_of_our_garden.php

[DesertZone]

Aaron
Yours are great too, especially the second photo. That is one big patch!!

I like the red one at the end too!! It got a name attached to it?

Looks like some more trades may be in order.

Thanks.

The red one at the end my mother-n-law got off the road someplace in Arizona.  They winter in Yuma, so it must have came from western AZ?  They thought it was so pretty they broke a pad off.

You can have anything I can dig up and send off, hell I owe ya my first born.

Hey here is a hybrid penstemon pics I found in my pics.  I wish I would have got some seeds off it.

 

[Weiser]

Aaron
Nice Pent. You can take stem cuttings off Pents. If you want to know how, check out the American Penstemon Societies web sight.
http://apsdev.org/propagation/index.html

[Nold]

Bob
Aaron and I are friends with LaMar Orton the owner of Plantasia Cactus Gardens, located in Twin Falls Idaho. Here is a link to pictures he has posted on his web sight of his display garden.
   

Very cool. Lots of maintenance, I see. (I tried to find someone to help me in the garden, but to no avail.)
I mostly like chollas and echinocereus, because the free space in my garden is shrinking rapidly. They do well in containers, though.

Bob

[DesertZone]

Aaron
Nice Pent. You can take stem cuttings off Pents. If you want to know how, check out the American Penstemon Societies web sight.
http://apsdev.org/propagation/index.html

Thank you!  I put that website to my favorites.  

[Hoy]

More exiting plants, Aaron and John!  I am starting to think I ought to build a glasshouse to be ready to my coming collection of hardy Opuntias! ..that is when I get some spare time.....
I have tried hardy Opuntias (can't recall the names though) three times but they never shrivel even in late fall and end up as a mess in a year or two. Too wet autumns and winters.

[Nold]

[quoteI have tried hardy Opuntias (can't recall the names though) tree times but they never shrivel even in late fall and end up as a mess in a year or two.]   [/quote]


Always a bad sign. I find it interesting that plants from cold climates, where the onset of cold weather is later than here, often enter dormancy later, and can be damaged or killed by cold, even though at their peak of dormancy they would endure the same cold temperatures.
And that you can see this process in the garden. The native Cylindropuntia imbricata has already lost its moisture and is ready for anything, but plants from lower latitudes, like C. spinosior (which seems to be getting quite tired of me and my garden) are not.

Bob

[Weiser]

I find it interesting that plants from cold climates, where the onset of cold weather is later than here, often enter dormancy later, and can be damaged or killed by cold, even though at their peak of dormancy they would endure the same cold temperatures.
And that you can see this process in the garden. The native Cylindropuntia imbricata has already lost its moisture and is ready for anything, but plants from lower latitudes, like C. spinosior (which seems to be getting quite tired of me and my garden) are not.

It must be due to a physiological reaction to the length of day more than to the onset of cold weather.

Don't they use the term "photoperiodism" to discribe this type of reaction to changing length of day? Or is there a better term to use?

[Nold]

It must be due to a physiological reaction to the length of day more than to the onset of cold weather.   

Predictive dormancy is used by plants (generally) adapted to the local climate to enter the dormant period, and this is usually based on day length. Technically, it's based on night length, but nobody ever goes around saying "night length".
Consequential dormancy is another strategy, when a plant is triggered into dormancy by a cold snap, or by cold experienced prior to the time it would ordinarily undergo predictive dormancy.
So you can have two plants of the same species that are equally cold hardy, but the one from North Dakota will go dormant before the one from southern New Mexico.
In fact you can see this happen. Both the catalpa down the street and the desert willow in my front yard start losing their leaves at the same time, but the chitalpa next door gets its leaves frozen. So do desert willows from places like Arizona. (There are about 8 of them here, from all over the southwest.)
My desert willow is from a famous plant south of Santa Fe, has endured everything Denver's weather can throw at it for over 20 years, but the chitalpa's desert willow half is apparently from a more southerly accession and doesn't go into dormancy as early. (Tashkent, where the chitalpa was bred, is not particularly cold, so they would have had no reason to look for a specially cold-hardy form of desert willow.)

Bob

[Weiser]

Predictive dormancy is used by plants (generally) adapted to the local climate to enter the dormant period, and this is usually based on day length. Technically, it's based on night length, but nobody ever goes around saying "night length".
Consequential dormancy is another strategy, when a plant is triggered into dormancy by a cold snap, or by cold experienced prior to the time it would ordinarily undergo predictive dormancy.
So you can have two plants of the same species that are equally cold hardy, but the one from North Dakota will go dormant before the one from southern New Mexico.
In fact you can see this happen. Both the catalpa down the street and the desert willow in my front yard start losing their leaves at the same time, but the chitalpa next door gets its leaves frozen. So do desert willows from places like Arizona. (There are about 8 of them here, from all over the southwest.)
My desert willow is from a famous plant south of Santa Fe, has endured everything Denver's weather can throw at it for over 20 years, but the chitalpa's desert willow half is apparently from a more southerly accession and doesn't go into dormancy as early. (Tashkent, where the chitalpa was bred, is not particularly cold, so they would have had no reason to look for a specially cold-hardy form of desert willow.)

Bob

I have seen this happen in my garden with Opuntias collected in North Dakota as compared to those collected in Arizona. It doesn't matter to the North Dakota plants, if it is 80f and damp or 40f and dry, every year they will go dormant and shrivel right on cue.

[Nold]

I have seen this happen in my garden with Opuntias collected in North Dakota as compared to those collected in Arizona. It doesn't matter to the North Dakota plants, if it is 80f and damp or 40f and dry, every year they will go dormant and shrivel right on cue.   

Yep. And for some cactus, the gymnocalcyium with the tissue damage for example, if it had had time to lose enough moisture before getting its rear end (literally, that was the back side of the cactus) frozen, it might have made it through much colder temperatures later on.
This happened with an enormous Agave havardiana x scabra cross that I had planted in the front garden to startle visitors during the 2002 NARGS tours. A 70 degree drop in temperature in November turned the thing to complete mush within a day.
(Scabra isn't really hardy here but I thought I'd give it another try.)

Bob

[Weiser]

Bob
I meant to comment on your last photo. Did you drug that poor droopy Imbricata? It is extremely limp!!

We all know how O. polyacantha can hybridize with other Opuntias here are a few examples I grow.


                                  'Claude Arno'   O. polyacantha x O. fragilis
                                            
                                                
                                Possible hybrid   O. macrorhiza  x  O. polyacantha

                                                

                                  Devils Tower, Wyoming   O. polyacantha x O. fragilis