A little calm, please:

The cactus are not so ugly. More ahead you will see them in detail. Their forms and flowerings are very attractive. Its culture does not present great problems but a minimum knowledge is needed to satisfy their necessities. Many collectors exist in Spain, all along our geography, who maintain their cactus in perfect state in spite of having bad climatology. Simply with few knowledge, we will be very able to choose the plants that more suitable seem to us on the basis of the local meteorological conditions. There are cacti from Andean zones of Chile and Peru that spend all the winter under the snow and can get to resist below cero until temperatures of -20° C.

We can specialize in desert cacti of barren zones where they get to hold several years without a drop of water, or can cultivate plants of forests and tropical zones, like the epifític cactus, that, quite to the contrary, pass great part of the year under rains and with a constant humidity very high.

The main advantage, which we have the lovers of cacti, is that we do not need a great space to maintain our collection. For example, in only 1 m2 of a terrace, anyone can hold up to 64 flowerpots of 12cm. If in addition we have the luck to have garden, we will be able, in just a few years, to enjoy a magnificent collection. The cactus are not bonsais, but it is possible to be adapted to vegetate in small flowerpots if we chose dwarfed speciess that only grow few centimeters but produce spectacular flowerings.

It is difficult to become bored with the cactus: They exist more than 1,200 different speciess. If in addition we add the varieties and the known hybrids, we could reach with facility more than 2,000 different forms. But we do not forget the other succulent plants; they exist more than 4,000 different speciess that we could adapt to our culture.

To collect cactus also means entering into a different culture: The cactus and the succulents plants are used in regional kitchens to make exotic plates; they have many uses in the medicine and they are still used as homemade remedies for diverse types of affections. The use as hallucinogenic cactus in indigenous rites of Latin America, being the best one known the “Peyote”, or Lophophora williamsii, existing at the present time in the USA the Church of Christ of the Peyote that counts with more than 600,000 followers.

Finally, and to end this introduction, you must know that the situation of the cactus in its places of origin is at least delicate. These plants have been often wildly collected for their illegal traffic in commercial circuits of rich countries and are, many of them, in danger, appearing in the list of protected speciess the more and more. Like serious collector, you could contribute in the Conservation of the Nature adapting and reproducing speciess in danger of extinction in its habitats.

Ok. Are you ready to continue? By the way, I forgot to tell you that cactus will only puncture you if they do not know who you are. It is very easy to become friend of a cactus.

So long,

Dr. Risco