Some Cereus Spring Flowering

One year later, the other Florida Harrisia species I’m growing has finally come into bloom! The aboriginal prickly apple cactus, Harrisia aboriginum, is sporting flower morphology true to description and with luck will produce bright yellow fruit. Because of habitat destruction, this endemic cactus is critically endangered and almost went extinct in it’s Southwest Florida coastal hammock range. The dedicated species tent, now called the Aboriginarium, will have to be built up higher as these are reaching 7-9ft tall and potentially twenty feet. It is quickly gaining popularity with Florida gardeners who can grow it in their yard sanctuaries. Last year’s Harrisia fragrans yielded a lot of the bright red tasty fruit and seeds for planting. They were a hit at winter holiday parties. Grown from provenanced seed, I can only sell these two species in Florida and cannot ship.

Other plants put on quite a show already. The wooly blue torch that has a cluster of arms around the base reached flowering maturity in early March after twelve years. While the big white flowering clustering Echinopsis turned out not to be what I had ordered as seed, we’re impressed with the size and beauty of the bloom. The Leptocereus santamarinae I had just been given suddenly flowered – too bad the newly-planted cutting isn’t yet rooted as I might have been able to get it to set fruit. Also pictured together are two of my very favorite Caribbean tree cacti: Pilosocereus royenii and Pilosocereus polygonus.