genus Wilcoxia

Monica Swartz eciton@utexas.edu
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:00:33 PDT
Hi Dennis and friends,
I have never stuck my nose in Wilcoxia flowers! I'll try it next time 
they flower. As for pots, I root them in tall one inch pots in pure 
Turface MVP. They can be slow but reliable to root. As soon as they 
have roots, they start making the big tubers, so they go straight 
into 4 or 5 inch pots. The pots I use are as deep as they are wide. 
It's strange to put a spiny stick thinner than a pencil in a pot that 
big, but the roots will fill the pot in a single summer. I think the 
'rule' of underpotting cacti means that Wilcoxia will rarely survive 
in typical cacti collections despite their spectacular and frequent 
flowers. They also don't like full sun since they grow inside bushes 
in the wild, and as I mentioned before, they are magnets for scale 
and mealybugs. They clamber up between shelves in my greenhouse and 
spend the winter dry. I try not to let the greenhouse drop below 
freezing. I have only been growing them since returning to Texas and 
I doubt Wilcoxia could have survived the heat of the low desert near 
the Salton Sea where we lived before. I found by experience that very 
few cacti can survive 120F+ high temps!  Dennis should have no 
problem growing them in the midwest as long as they are protected 
from cold. I've never grown them from seed. Would you water daily 
like with other cacti seedlings? I always thought cacti needed so 
much water to start life because of shallow sparse roots, but 
Wilcoxia has big roots.....hmmm.
good luck, monica



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