Long-form articles on legality, conservation, collecting, and rare cacti.
A field number is a collector’s code that records exactly where and when a cactus was found. This guide explains what FR, SB, L, KK and other codes mean, the collectors behind them, and how to look one up.
Twenty cactus facts with citations: the fifth most threatened plant group on Earth, the only cactus that reached Africa by bird, the species described in 2013 and largely poached within months, the rainforest epiphyte sold every Christmas as a desert plant, plus sixteen more.
Three methods, three timelines: cactus propagation by seed, cutting, or graft. The complete pillar with rootstock rankings, the Pereskiopsis seedling-graft that brought Aztekium ritteri into cultivation, CITES seed-permit context, and genus-specific time-to-flower data.
Twenty cold hardy cactus species ranked coldest first, from Opuntia fragilis at −50°C lab-survival to Echinopsis atacamensis at Zone 8. Every entry carries a USDA zone with peer-reviewed sources and the substrate-dryness caveat that separates living plants from rotted ones.
The best cactus soil is roughly 90 percent mineral and 10 percent organic. A DIY cactus soil mix recipe (pumice, lava rock, zeolite, granite, limestone, worm castings) with per-genus ratios for Lophophora, Ariocarpus, Astrophytum and Copiapoa, plus the squeeze test.
Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) is a federally Schedule I plant in the United States with a narrow Native American Church religious-use exemption. This reference covers every US state and more than 30 countries, citing the operative statute for each.
No cactus currently holds the IUCN’s formal Extinct in the Wild status. Mammillaria glochidiata held it until 2013. These seven walk that line, with cultivation lineages serving as the only insurance population for species whose wild type localities have been inundated, cleared, or stripped.
Ranked list of the 10 best U.S. universities for botany and plant biology, evaluated on herbarium depth, greenhouse facilities, faculty research in Cactaceae and desert ecology, and graduate career outcomes.
The peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, is a small spineless button cactus of the Chihuahuan Desert and south Texas. What it is, how to identify it against look-alikes, where it grows, its CITES Appendix II and IUCN Vulnerable status, and the conservation of wild populations.
The Huntington Library cactus garden, Desert Botanical Garden Phoenix, Boyce Thompson Arboretum, and five more US institutions where serious rare-cactus collectors plan a weekend visit. Addresses, current admission, and what to look for as a collector.
