Showing a Softer Side
Built to take the tough conditions of a desert, cactuses may seem unfriendly, warding off all comers with sharp spines and prickly hairs. But during the season (which differs for each plant) when the cactus erupts in come-hither blooms meant to reel in pollinators, spiky notocactus and echinocereus sport red and orange topknots; mammillarias don crowns of pink, and the barrel-shaped discocactus all but disappears under a white chapeau unfurling at night in a cloud of perfume.
“People are drawn to cactuses for their character and shape. But the flowers are an added bonus,” says David Bernstein, owner of California Nursery Specialties Cactus Ranch, a Reseda nursery that focuses on succulents. While each blossom might open only for a day or two, many blooms can succeed each other on a single plant in a show that lasts weeks or even months. With certain plants, such as mammillarias, vivid fruit may follow the bloom and carry the party on longer.
Since most cactuses start growing when it’s warm, most flower in L.A. from late winter through spring and taper off in summer heat. Those with bright blooms usually pop in sunlight and close up when the sun departs. Their pollinators are day-active-birds, bees, flies and other insects. Paler blooms, more apt to open at night, attract nocturnal moths and bats, and they’re often fragrant.
Take Cereus peruvianus, one of the best-known night bloomers. Come June, its creamy, 6-inch-wide flowers fill the air with a scent like citrus. And long after the petals fall, you can enjoy the fruit-called “cactus apple” or pitaya in Spanish. “It’s as sweet and sugary as a kiwi and quite expensive if you can even find it in a store,” Bernstein says.
The blooms of echinopsis, or Easter lily cactus, can be bigger than the plant itself, rising around the squat green ball on multiple stalks to form a 10-inch-tall forest. Then there are the splashy red-hot or purple garlands that transform the otherwise rather repulsive rat’s tail cactus, and the fingerlike protuberances of cleistocactus, pollinated by hummingbirds.
Many cactuses need a couple of years’ growth before they bloom. For others, the wait can be even longer. The saguaro, which may soar to 50 feet in the wilds of Arizona, blooms only when it’s old-and almost never in cultivation. Similarly, Cephalocereus senilis , the aptly named “old man,” with its shaggy white hair, seldom flowers outside its habitat in Central Mexico.
The trick to coaxing out cactus blooms is to get plants to grow well from the beginning. Bernstein starts his in a good, fast-draining potting mix (he recommends half perlite and half organic matter, or else a blend formulated for succulents) and waters sparingly in winter to discourage rot. When warm weather arrives, he says, it’s time to water well, whenever the soil feels dry to touch.
“Extra water and nutrients, especially for a potted plant, helps it send out new growth, and that growth is what the flowers form on.” When you water, you should also fertilize.
Bernstein, who began collecting cactuses as a child 40 years ago, feeds his own plants with an all-purpose, balanced, water-soluble granular food, mixing in one-eighth tablespoon per gallon of water. “Feeding a little bit more often is better than giving plants huge meals once in a while,” he says.
In the cactus world, a lot can happen in a week. Those wartlike growths on your chamaecereus become bright-red stars; your thorny hoodia develops lavender cups; your notocactus holds a small bouquet very gently amid its spines.
