The weird plant in the first two pix is called rhipsalis - which species, I don't know for sure. Most people call it Pencil Cactus. It's actually an epiphyte, a plant that grows on other plants. If you've been reading other posts here, you've probably gathered that I really like epiphytes of all stripes.Rhipsalis is one that can also be grown in ordinary soil. As I go about potting up my hurricane rescue plants, I keep turning up little wonders like this. Stuff I'd almost forgotten I have. This one is the trunk and root ball of a huge mound of rhip I picked up. The thing's all of maybe 3 feet high - yet it's so heavy I almost needed Walter to help me pot it.
The plant in the second two pix is, I suspect, its cousin. But I haven't turned up a likely candidate as I surf about trying to identify it. All I have to go on, so far, is that neighbor Peter says the FL vernacular for this one is, *walkingstick.* Makes sense. Googling various iterations of *walkingstick plant* etc. only brings me info on ads for canes, a tree called walkingstick - but certainly not this - and those wonderful bugs, like the one that visited Livey last year. So if anyone knows what the hell it is, let me in on it, ok?
It cracks me up. Every time I walk by it I start to laugh again. Look at its cute little leaves! So tender, so tiny, so brave!
7 comments:
Pencil cactus?
Now waitaminnit, we have pencil cactus here--or more accurately pencil cholla. One plant per name please...
I had one in my front yard for the longest time, but it died out from a mold attack because the area was too damp.
It's a great stealth attacker. You can be walking through calf-high bursage and brittle bush and other herbaceous plant remnants in the desert, and suddenly be stabbed and prickled by an unknown assailant. It's a pencil cholla growing in amongst some other plant on the desert floor!
Yeah, those *common names* for plants can be colorful, but that wears out pretty quick when you can't figure out from that name what your plant *really* is.
Better yet, THIS pencil cactus isn't even a cactus. It's another of those dreaded Euphorbias. Bleeding its poisonous white sap on you and everything, all the bells and whistles.
I didn't know there was a *pencil* cholla. I remember from long horseback rides on the high desert how tiring it can be to keep an eye out for *jumping* cholla.
Long ago I tried to explain chaps to someone who'd never been there. This person thought chaps were an affectation. As if that many cowboys really would waste their time-effort-money on an unnecessary cowboy fashion accessory.
Explaining about the jumping cholla finally broke through.
Pencil cholla look very similar to your pencil cactus, except paler green and armed with fierce thorns and glochids too numerous to enumerate.
Glochid? GLOCHID?!? I must google this! I have never heard of a clochid in my life. However! It SOUNDS like something absolutely HORRIBLE.
Right as I'm moving toward mounting eighteen gajillion cereuses, two species, one with these horrible tiny hair needles that get under your skin and fester...
"Tiny, barbed,easily detached spine, often occuring in tufts; found only in the subfamily Opuntioideae."
I've no idea if this thing I'm going to be stringing up on wood is anything related to a cereus, or is in the subfamily Opuntioodeae.
I can say with absolute certainty that whether it is or isn't is immatierial when you're dealing with those burrowing festering little hairs.
*sigh*
This is what I get for falling in love with this stuff. You know. Plants that bite.
I realize this entry is a couple years old, but I came across it while looking for something else. The name of your plant in the last 2 pix is Pedilathus tithymaloides, Devil's Backbone. Latin names are definitely the way to go-especially when you want to find the correct identity of a plant! :)
ha, I will try out my thought, your post bring me some good ideas, it's really amazing, thanks.
- Thomas
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