October 2024 - the plant you have had for the longest time

[Paul in Essex]

Bit late on this but I am sure we can catch up. I was on hols and don't check forum stuff much when I am away.

My theme is to take a good picture of the plant in your collection you have owned for the longest time. It most likely won't be the oldest plant you own, nor necessarily one you have grown from seed, just the one you have owned for longest. As this is a photographic competition, a beautifully shot picture of a plant you acquired 2 weeks ago, if you have just started, has equal merit to one you bought from Woolworth's in 1952. A back story helps, of course.

[MatDz]

Still half a month left, plenty of time to take a picture or two.

[Tony R]

Okay, I can start this off for you, Paul.
This is the plant that I have had in my collection for the longest time, since early 1984, so a mere 40 years.
The photo below was taken this summer when at its most floriferous. (Sorry I could only fit the top half of the plant in the photo!)

So what is the Back Story?
According to my 'Cactus Index' here are some of the records for Plant Accession No: C2 Cleistocactus strausii
I bought this plant from Van Hages Garden Centre in Ware on 12th January 1984 for £1.25 and it was 5 inches tall and was repotted into a 3 inch pot.
4 years later after 2 further repottings it was 26 inches tall with three small offsets from the base on 25th June 1988 in a 7.5 inch pot.
When we moved from Hertfordshire to Kent in 1997 it was in a 15 inch pot and had 4 columns 40, 26, 23 and 15 inches tall.
Once I had built my 'new' greenhouse it was planted out in the central bed on 15th August 1998.
Since then it has grown faster and faster and thicker and thicker as the years go by.
Several times I have had to remove a column as it hits the roof! You can see now that there are two more columns within centimetres of the roof, so the pruning saw will need to come out again very soon. Once a column is removed, in time a new one (or more) will begin to grow from the point of removal.

[potato]

Here is my entry: Lithops lesliei cv. Albinica

I'm very new to the hobby, so I've only had this plant for 6 months. It was in the first batch of lithops I got and is one of the prettiest of the lot. And as you can see, I managed to not make it too unhappy in my care because it's in flower now.

[habanerocat]

Okay, I can start this off for you, Paul.
This is the plant that I have had in my collection for the longest time, since early 1984, so a mere 40 years.
The photo below was taken this summer when at its most floriferous. (Sorry I could only fit the top half of the plant in the photo!)

So what is the Back Story?
According to my 'Cactus Index' here are some of the records for Plant Accession No: C2 Cleistocactus strausii
I bought this plant from Van Hages Garden Centre in Ware on 12th January 1984 for £1.25 and it was 5 inches tall and was repotted into a 3 inch pot.
4 years later after 2 further repottings it was 26 inches tall with three small offsets from the base on 25th June 1988 in a 7.5 inch pot.
When we moved from Hertfordshire to Kent in 1997 it was in a 15 inch pot and had 4 columns 40, 26, 23 and 15 inches tall.
Once I had built my 'new' greenhouse it was planted out in the central bed on 15th August 1998.
Since then it has grown faster and faster and thicker and thicker as the years go by.
Several times I have had to remove a column as it hits the roof! You can see now that there are two more columns within centimetres of the roof, so the pruning saw will need to come out again very soon. Once a column is removed, in time a new one (or more) will begin to grow from the point of removal.

Incredible detail.

[Herts Mike]

You won’t recognise Van Hages now Tony, it’s a horrible Christmas nightmare that you can’t escape from.

[Cidermanrolls]

A great topic….. I can’t offer up quite as much detail as Tony, but here is my offering, with some history.

The plant pictured might not be the plant I’ve had the longest, but I’ve had it for around 50 years. This Echinocactus grusonii was given to me by a chap called Paul Dyer. Paul was, at the time, the boyfriend of my eldest sister and the elder brother of one of my classmates. Paul worked weekends at a nursery near Redditch and gave this plant to Cath, to pass on to me. I was in the old ‘third form’ at the time, so probably about 12. I’m now 62. When I got it the plant was still in the juvenile tubercular form, rather than the adult rib form. The pot it’s now in is about 30” diameter.
For many years I grew it in a free root-run bed, but a few years ago I moved all those plants back in to pots as the bed was getting difficult to manage. The move back in to a pot has checked the growth and this can just be seen in the crown where the spine formation is uneven.

[Cidermanrolls]

This ‘entry’ is a bit of a cheat entry.
My very first cacti were given to me by my late grandma Holmes, way back, when I was probably about 8 (close to 55 years ago). Kelloggs Special K had an offer on their cereal boxes where if you collected a certain number of tokens they would send you some cacti. Grandma duly sent off and presented me with four cacti. I managed to keep three of those alive into my adult years, a Trichocereus, a Notocactus and a Mammillaria hidalgensis. The Notocactus died probably 20 years ago and the Tricho died about fifteen years ago, a victim of red spiders. The Mammillaria carried on until pretty recently. When I finally confined its husk to the compost I found this self set seedling at its base, and so my oldest plant still lives on in the form of a seedling….

[el48tel]

PSX_20241021_120427.jpg (274.92 KiB) Viewed 564 times

One of a small number of plants I continue to enjoy. Not so old since I'm a relatively new collector. It flowers most of the summer season upto the end of October, with upto four dozen flowers in the season. It was bought late October 2018 as an unnamed hybrid. It flowered in the car on the way home from AbbeyBrook. Blew my mind. Set me off on a journey of discovery of Echinopsis hybrids. To this day the journey continues when other genera have fallen by the wayside. It has a special place both in my heart and the GH, and is now too large to move without careful planning.

[el48tel]

Grusonii. The first plant still surviving from the second epoch of collection. A purchase from IKEA by my daughter for the first father's day in our new northern home. Was tiny in a 5cm pot. Now outgrowing it's 15cm pot. Didn't enjoy its GH stint. Tolerated by HRH in the conservatory. It's the colour and intensity of the spination which attracts me.