Cacti and Succulents

Before I came to know them, I was convinced that cacti were ugly, sharp, static things completely without charm. But when my folks retired and moved a bit north, I received quite a few lovely, well-kept container plants. Most followed form, thriving in the two weeks that I fussed over them then fading as I forgot to water and feed them. One day, months later, I finally looked up to realize yet another batch of houseplants had met their demise.

Yet two plants of the lot still lived! What was this? It didn’t fit my experience at all. One was a cactus, a mammillaria of unknown species and the other a succulent, euphorbia obesa. They were patiently waiting for water, plumped up when I gave it to them and went on growing as they had, with or without my help.

I could not help but love them. Because sharp and weird or not, they survived. A sovereign virtue for a plant in my clumsy hands. So I read a bit about them and bought a few more. And they survived, too. At last, I was a gardener who didn’t kill plants! Then one specimen or another of a starting collection bloomed and I was permanently hooked.

For when they bloom, cacti and succulents reveal their secret nature. Gone is the forbiddingly stern attitude they normally exhibit, their beauty all sculptural; shadow and form. No, in their breeding season they get as silly as anyone else, using ruffles and curls and all colors of the rainbow in their flowers.

A few days pass and the Mardi Gras is over. They shed their courting clothes for the year and return to colors that blend with the landscape, hypocritically insisting by appearance that the excesses of spring are something in which only the neighboring annuals indulge.

Text and images Copyright 1998 Cyndi Kirkpatrick. All rights reserved