Recently I have been taking photos of my seedlings with a macro lens. Unfortunately I still don’t know how to use in any other conditions than strong light without getting grainy photos. So a lot of summer photos in this post.
I haven’t stopped sowing seeds, but my photographing efforts are now focused on the larger seedlings, which are much less tricky to shoot. These two are the oldest I have at 1 year and 8 months, a ferocactus (left) and a gymnocalycium (right).
Some of the fastest growers, pretty much having reached the same size as the ones above although not older than one year, are pilosocereus. I sowed quite a few packs of them, some just labeled pilosocereus mix – most of them from cactusstore.com. While I like their resilience (one has survived two brutal cat attacks – yes, turns out my cat is encouraged by their harmlessness to just snack on them) most of them are bright green instead of blue. There is slight hinge of blue on one seedling alone but even that is hard to capture with regular light. Here are some photos of some them, including my favorite spineless one.
I’ve finally managed to get some copiapoas to germinate and some to even stay alive. I’ve had the most success with copiapoa hypogaea lizard skin where a whole batch of 10 germinated and is looking good. My other copiapoa efforts have yielded about 5 solid-looking seedlings out of ~500 seeds.
I’ve also struggled with weingartia, but this may be because I only had one source of seeds. I insisted on buying the same seeds several times, each time with very little success. All in all I have three good- and different looking weingartia seedlings, looking forward to see them grow.
As I’ve been sowing for quite a while now, I’ve had to move beyond my favorite cacti and start sowing a bit of everything basically. I am not that into stenocactus, but I did sow a few types, and it all went pretty smooth with them. The top left one bellow is a steno multicostatus.
I’m also enjoying the sturdiness of gymnocalycium saglionis (top right corner). I sowed a pack of 100 seeds advertised as different saglionis varieties. At this point, a bit over one year old, I can clearly tell apart two varieties, most because of their different coloration.
Finally the bottom photo above is an escobaria seedling. Again I had a pack of 100 seeds of escobaria, labeled to be a mix. Most of them looked alike with the exception of this guy, looking very odd from day one. As I couldn’t help it, I had it endure the most by re-potting it about four times in one year. To my surprise despite its diminutive size, it did not die and is in fact the only escobaria seedling to make it through the winter! The photo does not do justice to this guy: it has a plump green-yellowish body with relatively large bright orange spines.
Finally some more close-ups (turbinocarpus, random mix, thelocactus hexadrophorous, gymno saglionis) and a group photo of my largest seedlings.
