My Arid bit

[Palmer]

Martin,
All these are winter hardy in a cold wet climate but it does depend on were they where collected in the wild, for instance O. fragilis has a wide distribution in north America but there not all hardy

Cylindropuntia
Whipplei
Imbricata
Clavata
Tunicata

Opuntia
Fragilis
Basilaris
Humifusa
Phaeacantha
Violacea
Polyacantha
Erinacea
nicholii

[turtile]

I have also just germinated some Opuntia humifusa seed from turtile in Slaughter Bay Delaware, which get hot wettisah summers and cold wet winters.

How many have germinated so far? The area where I collected seeds flooded for a few hours after the last storm we had. We had close to 4 inches of rain within 36 hours!

[Dave Brown]

42 so far, but I did not sow them all, still have about 50 seed left

This was a pic taken a week orso ago

[bodster]

sounds good palmer. wheres the best place to get hardy opuntias?

[Palmer]

To be honest Martin,i am a bit out of sync with the best suppliers because i havent bought any since the mid 90s, but Martin in (Denmark) who Dave B mentioned has an excellent variety of hardy cactus, perhaps Dave will put his website up, also if you google hardy cacti there is a couple of very good seed suppliers in the US, that also state the provinance of the seed, i bought a book in the mid nineties called growing winter hardy cacti in cold/wet climate conditions, by John n. spain, published by Elizabeth harmon. if you can get hold of it, it is without doubt the holy bible of winter hardy cactus.



Tony

[Dave Brown]

Here is Martin's website http://www.northern-nursery.dk/ but please bear in mind he is not a commercial nusery, although he does sell off plants and cuttings from time to time. best thing is to email him, to ask when his next plant sale is.

[Alexander]

sounds good palmer. wheres the best place to get hardy opuntias?

For realy hardy Opuntias have a look at: http://www.kakteengarten.de
http://www.semper-vivum.de and http://www.sempervivumgarten.de All 3 are German nurseries but they get very good selection, cultivars and hybrids wich are tough as old boots.
A year ago I had ordered a lot of Opuntias and some Cylindropuntias and they are doing great with a lot of flowerbuds. When you order plants from Kakteengarten and Semper-vivum you will get fullgrown plants with, in my case, flowerbuds. It was in May I had ordered them. You pay about 5, 50 Euro for such a plant. Not a bad price for a fukllgrown plant with 5 flowerbuds on it. Kakteengarten has a list with all there cacti and they are rated with numbers for there hardiness, amount of flowers etcetera. I took the ones wich can due without a rainshelter (regenschutz nicht notwendig), with good winterhardiness (below-20 C) and freeflowering. An example about hardiness, I had one Cylindropuntia imbricata here from a Dutch nursery growing next to Cylindropuntia imbricata Uhlig. The Dutch imbricta died last winter but the Uhlig had nothing! The hardiest Cylindropuntia imbricata are the northerly form aborescens.

Best is to have a look on the PDF list of cacti from Kakteengarten, start with the hardiest ones wich will flower well in England. They flower well here in Holland so they should do well in most parts of your country. And chose a site with as much sun as possible! Best is from sunrise to sunset. Mi ones get sun all day and that what they realy like. And sandy soil.

Alexander

[Alexander]

About the most northerly cacti, its Opuntia fragillis and it grows as far north as 57 latitude north in Canada. Opuntia polyacantha grows as far north as 51 or maybe 52 degrees north.

Alexander