Blossfeldia liliputana KK 1525 Seed Grown

Description

Type: Seed grown, never grafted · Sown: 2002 · Size: about 1.4 in (3.5 cm) across · Field data: KK 1525, Tomina, Bolivia

Blossfeldia liliputana KK 1525 is for sale here as a single plant: a 24 year old cluster of the smallest cactus in the world, sown in 2002, never grafted, and still carrying the field number of the wild population its seed line came from. The plant in the photographs, tag and all, is the exact one you will receive.

At rarecactus.com we grow our Blossfeldia from seed in our Orange County, California greenhouse and never graft them. With this species that is the slow road by a wide margin. Most Blossfeldia in cultivation has spent at least part of its life on a Pereskiopsis or Echinopsis rootstock, because seedlings the size of a pinhead are hard to keep alive ungrafted. A plant that has stayed ungrafted for more than two decades, with its locality still attached, rarely comes up for sale.

What makes Blossfeldia liliputana KK 1525 different

A single head of Blossfeldia liliputana stops at about 10 to 12 mm: a flat, grey-green disc with no ribs, no tubercles and no spines, its areoles reduced to tiny tufts of wool set in a spiral. This plant has built about eight of those heads into one tight clump. The close view from above shows the detail collectors look for, every head peppered with cream wool dots and a whiter tuft at each growing point. Where the oldest heads meet at the centre, the skin has turned pale and corky, which is how age shows on a plant this small.

The species is a physiological oddity as well as a small one. It carries about 0.6 stomata per square millimetre, the lowest density recorded for any vascular land plant, and in habitat it can dry down by up to 80 per cent of its weight and revive when moisture returns, more like a moss than a cactus. Kew accepts a single species, Blossfeldia liliputana, and treats the other names published in the genus as synonyms. Our Blossfeldia liliputana species page covers the plant in depth, and the Blossfeldia genus hub explains where it sits in the cactus family.

Field data: KK 1525, Tomina, Bolivia

KK 1525 is a field number of the Czech nurseryman and collector Karel Kníže, who supplied European growers with seed from his South American trips from the 1960s onward. The number records a population at Tomina, in the Chuquisaca department of southern Bolivia, at about 2,200 m. Kníže listed it as Blossfeldia tominense, and it also circulates as B. liliputana var. tominensis. Botanically it is Blossfeldia liliputana; the old name tells you where the line came from.

That number is what separates this plant from the anonymous Blossfeldia in the trade. It ties the seed line to one wild population at one recorded place, so plants from Tomina can be kept apart from those of Jujuy or Tarija. You can browse Kníže’s KK numbers, and those of the other collectors behind our plants, in our Field Number Database.

How we grow it

We keep Blossfeldia in a small pot of fine, extremely free-draining mix: pumice, lava, zeolite, granite grit and silica, with about 10 per cent worm castings and no limestone, top-dressed with granite grit so the heads sit dry. It gets shade and steady airflow rather than the hard direct sun a globular cactus takes. Water goes on sparingly through the warm months, only once the mix is completely dry and never onto the body in sun, and stops for a dry winter rest between 5 and 15°C.

This plant is seed grown, with a strong root system, and has never sat on a rootstock. Grafted Blossfeldia swells fast and loses the flat, tight habit of the species; seed grown plants keep it, and at this pace a clump of eight heads is many years of growth.

Flowering

Flowers open at or near the apex of a head, white and rarely pink, 6 to 15 mm long, and a single flower can be as wide as the head that carries it. At 24 years this cluster is old enough to flower. For most of the year the show is the dotted, spineless heads themselves.

When your plant arrives

Your Blossfeldia liliputana KK 1525 ships well rooted and dry, in its pot, packed so the heads cannot rub. When you pot it up, choose a small pot with sharp drainage and a fine mineral mix, set it in bright indirect light out of harsh direct sun, and give no water for about 14 days while it settles in. After that, follow the sparing, fully-dry-between-waterings routine above, and keep it dry and above 5°C through winter.

Provenance and legality

Blossfeldia sits on CITES Appendix II through the family-wide listing of the Cactaceae. CITES governs international trade, so a plant shipped within the United States needs no permit, and artificially propagated, seed grown stock like this is the lawful way to own one. We ship to US addresses only.

One Blossfeldia liliputana KK 1525 is offered: the 24 year old cluster in the photographs, about 1.4 in across against the tape measure.