This will be a short post, simply because I didn’t take many good pictures in this cactus house. For some reason, the light was kind of dim the day I went in the CBG cactus house, and very few of my pictures turned out. Normally cactus houses are bright and sunny; great places to take pictures. It wasn’t my day, I guess.
The cactus house seemed more like a cactus corridor. One side of the walkway was a display of large cacti, with a (typical) desert mural behind the plants. The other side was a lengthy glass display case filled with tiny cacti, the size of which you might expect on someone’s windowsill.
Most of these cacti had nametags! Unfortunately my close-up photos were blurry. If only I was still in Christchurch.These cacti have been planted in the ground. The big one on the left is a Myrtillocactus geometrizans, Blue Candle Cactus.
I did manage to get a few pictures of the mature cacti.
Golden Barrel Cactus, Echinocactus grusonii. I never get bored looking at those big yellow spines.This E grusonii has the beginnings (or ends) of some flower buds. It looks almost like a crown.Echinopsis thelegona, one of the Sea Urchin Cacti. These can get as tall as your head, but can also sprawl out much further than that. A single specimen looks very much like a huge snake!
In case any of you were wondering what exactly makes a cactus (not all spiny plants are cacti) a cactus, I snapped a photo of the info-board in the cactus corridor.
Remember: spines and areoles.
The next post will be on a slightly more humid glasshouse in the CBG. One of my favorite greenhouses in New Zealand… there are plenty of bananas growing inside!
I love a challenge. Whether it is germinating seeds from exciting new plants (at least exciting and new for me), keeping and raising fish, poison dart frogs, and ornamental shrimp, or navigating new areas of the world without maps or guides, I am interested in it. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest most of my life, and I'm still fond of moss and gray skies.
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