Succulents and More™

Quite a few of the photos I take in our garden never make it into any of my posts because they don’t fit a particular theme. But that doesn’t mean they’re not pretty / useful / interesting. Here’s a late June 2024 collection of some of these odds and ends. ~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve shown you a lot of blooming cacti in recent weeks, but those weren’t the only flowers in June. Here are a few others – even a green one. ⤥ Gasterias are South African succulents closely related to aloes (they’re able to cross-breed). The genus name comes from the Greek word for stomach, because the flowers are shaped like tiny stomachs. The flower below is from a Gasteria acinacifolia . Gasteria acinacifolia ⤥ Our Eucalyptus macrocarpa has been a shy bloomer, but it finally produced one of its spectacular flowers. I wish there were more, but it’s a beautiful plant even without flowers. Just look at these leaves! Eucalyptus macrocarpa There are two basic types of eucalyptus: gum trees (single-stemmed and massive) an...

It’s been a month since my last cactus flower posts in the third week of May ( Echinopsis ‘Flying Saucer’ and ‘First Light’ here , the others here ). Many of the cacti in our garden have been busy since then, so this is a fairly long post with lots of photos (and even a few videos). I know that including so many pictures may cause cactus flower fatigue in some of you, but I hope you’ll make it to the end – there’s a lot of beauty to enjoy. Echinopsis ‘Napaea’, my favorite cactus flower this month Figuring out how to best present so many photos is always a challenge. In my earlier post from May, I decided to go in alphabetical order. This time, I opted to sort my photos roughly in line with the color wheel. I’ll start with red (and related tints like pink) and continue to orange, yellow, and then purple. Sorry, no green and blue flowers this time. Color wheel Rat-tail cactus ( Aporocactus flagelliformis ) The rat-tail cactus is a popular houseplant (Wikipedia says it was one the first...