You don't need any special plant lights for starting cacti, any regular fluorescent will work. You'll have to try quite hard to provide sufficient light. One 15W fluorescent is probably less than ideal for a propagator, especially if it is just a desk lamp outside the propagator since much of the li...

How's your latin and German?
http://www.mfaint.demon.co.uk/cactus/tu ... ensis.html

I don't think this one ever really caught on.

The latest Flora of North America keeps Glandulicactus and Ancistrocactus separate from Sclerocactus, but lumps Toumeya. Molecular studies suggest Glandulicactus at least belongs in that other difficult mass of semi-related plants, Ferocactus, Echinocactus, etc, but that thorny issue may not be tack...

I'm not sure mine will ever look quite like that, Vic, but I do like the flowers. I remember Roy posting photos of his extremely spiny plants.

I don't think I have any cacti that would be remotely exchangeable for such a fine specimen.

Here's my L. localis Peersii Form, flowering in 2005. I like it, but its got a long way to go to match Vic's!
[attachment 2058 peersii1.jpg]

I'm sure it'll produce a great display next year with your care, Vic.

One of my freebie seeds from the BCSS this year was Sclerocactus uncinatus ssp wrightii. I've not grown this genus from seed but have read about difficulties and experienced slow and erratic germination from the related Pediocactus. So I stuck the seeds outside during the cold week of January, it go...

Definitely Lithops terricolor. Its not a species that clumps quickly so will be pretty old. Quite possibly Peersii form, although quite possibly not. I wouldn't even start to guess which Cole number it might be derived from. Interesting that it doesn't show old flowers. Do you know if it flowered or...

Good or bad? I say awful! The plants that are bought in are generally good quality, astonishingly cheap really, if a little pumped from their rapid growth. But I don't know a single garden centre that even attempts to maintain them in good health, and pest outbreaks are common. Keeping them in the p...

The cactus mall maintenance suite (sorry, can't remember the name off the top of my head) provides very simple one-click mechanisms for maintaining efficient tables. The design of the Phorum software also means that table fragmentation is quite limited. Plus, as has been mentioned, storage space isn...