Eulichnia sp.     8/20/18
When this flower appeared, I sent the following note and this picture to my club in Albuquerque: A cactus book I once happened to read said that it's uncommon to see a flower of an Eulichnia in captivity. They live in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile and are a tree-type, several meters tall in age. I grew one from seed many (30?) years ago. It got big and rangy, but the pot kept it from becoming a tree. It did become branch-y. A few years after I moved to New Mexico with all my cacti, the Eulichnia had a flower. (I was not yet a member of CSSNM.) I cut the plant down afterwards, keeping about a four foot piece in an even smaller pot than before, containing only gravel and stones. No soil of any kind. This piece rooted but didn't grow significantly, just occasional new spines appeared at random areoles over the years. I watered and fertilized the same as my other cacti. Last year I put the piece into a gallon pot, in (synthetic) soil, and it's grown several inches since then I've just been rewarded with a second flower. I think it's been about ten years since the first flower. So far the flower has opened and closed for two days. The flower, which is apical and diurnal, is about 2 inches across. Note the relatively massive and wooly calyx from which the petals (tepals?) emerge. The plant is delineated by the thin gray/black/brown spines that surround the flower. The background plants are two Oreocereus celsianus.   (09/32)   

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