Ferocactus emoryi
24th October 2015
No sooner do I build a little cactus house than it fills up with cacti, it is beyond my understanding.
To be entirely honest, I'm not even sure why I built a little cactus house in the first place, I thought
I had entirely dealt with my prickly fixation many years ago. Nonetheless these things come around again
to spike us in the fingers.
In habitat in southern Arizona and Mexico Ferocactus emoryi can grow to 2m tall with the girth of a coal bunker.
It is visions of this vege-boulder of magnificence dressed in a shawl of red curving spines that inspired me to buy a youngster.
It is self-delusion. If I live to be 200 and can keep the frost from it reliably then I might achieve that end, but those two
hurdles are probably insuperable and this poor baby is almost certainly doomed to an immature death in a small pot.
Sad isn't it.
I could probably cheat and jump forward a few decades - specimens are often available in southern Europe and I could pop
away for a week with the van, but what then? These things aren't really a practical proposition once they outgrow their
pottable juvenility.
So I find myself growing this baby wistfully, harpooned by prickly yearning.