This year I went, for the first time, to one of the cactus show&sales that seem to happen regularly in the LA area. This was a winter one and it was organized by the San Gabriel Valley Cactus and Succulent Society – their website has a list of upcoming events, out of which the CSSA Annual Show in June is probably the largest.
The event took place at the LA County Arboretum. At first I was slightly under-impressed with the size of the hall, but the sale, although small, had really great plants at very good prices. This first couple of photos are plants from Desert Creations, one of my favorite sellers there and one of the suppliers of the LA’s Echo Park Cactus Store in as I found out. Their website does not do list most of the plants they sell, but I was told I can just shoot an email if there are any plants I want (they do ship).
Astrophytum ornatum 
Grafted uebelmannia pectinifera
There were many other nice plants, in particular RobRoys plants, who I met and was also a very friendly person. As it turns out, I didn’t take many photos of his plants, I just bought them: case in point the top row of the 6 plants in the last photo of my haul, sclerocactus uncinatus v. wrightii, acanthocalycium glaucum, echinocactus platycanthus and the thelocactus lausseri at the bottom. The other two plants in the photo are a gymnocactus gieseldorfianus from Cactus Data Plants and echinocereus subinermis v ochoteranae, which bloomed a couple of weeks later.
My haul from the show. I had to lose the pots and pack them in my carrier for the next day’s flight back to NYC.
The second half of the hall was reserved for the show part. The only thing I can say about these plants is that the photos don’t do justice: most of them are more massive than the photos convey! Some of these cacti have achieved fame status and I recognized them from instagram photos other people had posted in the past, like this unbelievable Uebelmannia clump from Wendell S. (Woody) Minnich.
Uebelmannia pectinifera clump
I can’t really say what plants were my favorite here so I’m just posting some of the photos I took.
Gymnocalycium pflanzi 
Matucana
