Don’t Bring that Prickly Pear in the House!

I received an email from a magazine with an article about using certain succulents for house plants. From the beginning I questioned most of the choices, and eventually the article suggested prickly pear as a house plant. Whaaaat? Are they serious? That’s a terrible...

Learn Those Plants’ Names!

The second of those three college-worthy lessons presented by Rob Wallace, professor at Iowa State University, at the Mid-States Cactus and Succulent Conference was about plant taxonomy, and since I have found that many people don’t  pay much attention to their...

Cactus or Succulent?

When I shared my Dudleya pulverulenta on March 6th this year, a few readers asked if it was an agave. No, it is a succulent native to Southern California. Both are succulent plants, and agaves are sometimes mislabeled as cactus, so the fact that there was some...

Dudleya Pulverulenta

The Cactus and Succulent Society of America (CSSA) held its biennial conference in July of 2019 in San Luis Obispo, California. Dudleyas are native to southern California, Guadalupe Island, and in the Baja area of Mexico and California. They love the Mediterranean...

Now My Other Albuca is Blooming

Last week I shared with you my Albuca humilis and its interesting flowers. I also have a form of an Albuca spiralis- you might remember I mentioned there are myriad varieties of this  species that are native to South Africa. If you google it, you will see...

Albucas and Their Artistic Flowers

I have shared albucas with you before, but you might have missed it. They are blooming now and are just such neat little flowers, I thought they deserved to be in the spotlight again. Albucas are in the Asparagaceae family, which means they are related to an...