Beauty or Beastly? : With Cactus, It’s in the Eye of the Beholder
“A lot of people think these plants are ugly,” Carl Volkers said. “And a lot of people probably don’t like them because you can’t touch them or hold them. People tend to think of them as prickly and ugly.”
He paused to look at the thousands of cactuses and succulents surrounding him in his “stock house”--one of two greenhouses where Volkers keeps the plants that provide seed for his cactus nursery in Vista. Some of the plants resembled green brains with spines; others looked like large rubber balls covered with cottage cheese. Several varieties looked as if they should be growing on the ocean bottom rather than in a greenhouse in north San Diego County.
“In many cases, they are ugly,” Volkers conceded. “Some are ugly as sin. They look great when they’re flowering, but the rest of the year--yechh!”
Special Kind of Person
It takes a special kind of person to love cactuses and succulents. And by that measure, there are a lot of special people in Vista. This community of 35,000 is the hub of the largest cactus- and succulent-producing area in the United States. Some say there are more of the plants grown in north San Diego County than in any other place in the world.
There are 30 to 35 growers in and around Vista, Fallbrook, San Marcos and Escondido. They range in size from Western Cactus Growers Inc., with 20 acres in production, down to individuals with only a few greenhouses in their backyards. But six nurseries--including Western, Cooper’s Cactus and Succulents, and Volkers’ C and J Cactus Nursery--are responsible for an overwhelming majority of the production. Together they annually grow millions of some of the most unusual plants this side of Uranus.
Those succulents that you sometimes see for sale at supermarkets--the ones that look like someone stuck a deer’s leg upside down in a pot and left only the hoof showing--those come from the north county. So do the cactuses that look like furry tree branches, and the ones that put out blossoms with the fragrance of rotting meat.
Good Climate
Climate is the main reason there are so many growers of cactuses and succulents here. It’s warm enough all year to keep greenhouse heating bills to a minimum, and some of the plants can be raised in the open air, reducing costs further. After a few growers became successfully established in the Vista area in the 1940s, others simply followed suit, according to John Cooper.
“I think (the industry) developed here because someone here studied the business, tried it out, had some success and then his neighbors picked up on it,” said Cooper, president of the California Cactus Growers Assn. and co-owner of Cooper’s Cactus and Succulents. The same process is going on today, Cooper said. His brother recently went into the cactus-growing business, and many of Cooper’s employees have started growing the plants on small plots of their own.
Cooper, who grows about 1,500 varieties on 9 1/2 acres in Vista and Valley Center, began raising cactus commercially 18 years ago. He was a rockhound at the time, and one day at a rock club meeting in Escondido, he found himself “talking to a big skinny dude. I asked him what he did for a living, and he said: ‘Cactus.’ That’s what got me interested,” Cooper recalled.
Quirk of the Business
It’s a quirk of the business that a lot of people who are involved in it are also interested in rocks. David Grigsby, owner of Grigsby’s Cactus Gardens in Vista, studied mineralogy before becoming a grower of cactuses and succulents. He has 1,200 different varieties at his four-acre Vista nursery.
“Cacti occur in the deserts of the western United States,” Grigsby said, “and a lot of people look for rocks . . . in the desert. So the people who go out to look for rocks often see cactus, and they get interested.”
It was a geologist friend who introduced Carl Volkers to cactus. When Volkers first saw the plants that his friend had obtained in the desert, “I was bowled over,” he said. “I had been fooling around growing flowers from seed, but I had never seen anything like these before. Pretty soon I was looking at pictures of cactus in (specialty) magazines, and my mouth was just watering.”
Among Largest Nurseries
Volkers and Jim Kampwirth opened C and J Cactus Nursery nine years ago. With nearly five acres of greenhouses and several hundred different varieties of plants, their cactus nursery is one of the largest in the north county.
Like most of the area’s large growers, Volkers and Kampwirth sell strictly wholesale (a notable exception is Grigsby, who sells retail and wholesale). Their customers include plant distributors, chain stores and other nurseries.
“Ninety-five percent of what we grow is not rare at all. We have to satisfy a certain clientele that wants certain plants,” said Volkers, explaining that the nursery sells hundreds of thousands of common cactuses and succulents every year.
Nevertheless, he is keenly interested in rare plants, partly because he knows that increasingly sophisticated buyers of cactuses and succulents are always looking for something new. In addition, as a dedicated plant collector, Volkers simply values the unusual.
Rare Cactus
One of the rarest cactuses he grows is a small, barrel-shaped thing with red spines. “It originally came from a very limited area in Baja California. But as far as anyone knows, it’s now extinct in the wild,” Volkers said. He purchased a few of the plants four years ago from another nursery and has raised nearly 100. But, he said, he plans to grow 2,000 to 3,000 before he offers them for sale.
Another rare plant at Volkers’ nursery is a round, green cactus from the area near Guanajuato, Mexico. Its spines are white and soft; in fact, they resemble feathers. That cactus was discovered just a few years ago, and Volkers was growing it five months before it was even scientifically described and named by botanists.
Volkers said he obtains some of his rarest specimens from adventurous plant collectors who discover new varieties. He collects seeds from them, then sells the seeds to other growers and plant collectors. Thousands of plants can come from a few seeds, which “create a pool of genetic material that helps keep the plants healthy and prevents them from becoming extinct,” he said.
“It’s a way of protecting the plants,” agreed Dorothy Dunn, a plant grower and collector who works closely with Cooper. Dunn visits Baja California three or four times a year to collect seeds from increasingly rare plants, many of which are being dug up and burned as land is cleared for agriculture and roads, she said. The seeds are carefully nurtured into mature plants in Cooper’s greenhouses, and their offspring are eventually offered for sale.
A Most Unusual Plant
In the past eight years, Dunn has brought back the seeds of boojum trees and several rare species of barrel cactus. But one of the most unusual plants she raises is a cactus from South Africa that puts out big, papery blossoms with the odor of rotting meat. The odor attracts flies, which pollinate the plant, Dunn said.
Other rare cactuses and succulents actually sprout for the first time in the north county greenhouses. Most growers carefully pollinate their plants with small paintbrushes, to ensure that the seeds produced will be exactly like the parent plants. But Cooper said plants are occasionally pollinated through natural means, creating hybrids.
“Sometimes we’re not even sure who the parents are,” Cooper said with a chuckle, “but some of the hybrids look terrific, and we expect some of them to become commercial varieties.”
Among Cooper’s favorite plants are Lithops , small, flat succulents that resemble rocks or animal hooves (they’re sometimes called “living stones”). He said they are among the hardiest plants on earth, and can survive droughts as long as seven years by pulling themselves down into the ground by their roots and closing tiny “windows” on their surface through which sunlight passes.
Drop in Business
Cooper and Volkers agreed that the cactus business has slowed somewhat from a boom in the 1970s when, as one north county grower put it, “you could sell anything you stuck in a pot.” As business slowed in the late ‘70s, nearly all local growers experienced lean years and some of the smaller ones went out of business. But now the demand for cactus and succulents has stabilized, according to Cooper.
“It’s a more sophisticated business now; buyers are more interested in unusual plants,” Volkers said. And that’s fine with him. He’s tired of hearing from people “with the preconceived notion that cactuses are all ugly things that you trip over while you’re walking through Arizona.”
