INTERNET EDITION. We Need To Start Preparing For The Show & Sale! July Presented by Mary Carrisalez. Monthly Meeting. Volume 11.

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1 INTERNET EDITION Opuntia basilaris var. treleasei Volume 11 July 2008 Number 7 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BAKERSFIELD CACTUS & SUCCULENT SOCIETY This Month's Program Cooking With Cactus Eriocereus bonplandii Photo by Stephen Cooley The Bakersfield Cactus & Succulent Society % Stephen Cooley, editor thecactuspatch@aol.com Presented by Mary Carrisalez Monthly Meeting Tuesday, July 8 Olive Drive Church, 5500 Olive drive at 6:30 PM (Building 6, Room 604) We Need To Start Preparing For The Show & Sale!

2 Volume 11 Number 7 July 2008 The Cactus Patch is the official publication of the Bakersfield Cactus & Succulent Society (BCSS) of Bakersfield, California. Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month at the times and places noted within. GUEST ARE ALWAYS WELCOME 2008 Officers President Ed Colley Vice-President Jerry Garrison Treasurer - Maynard Moe Secretary Anne Lee Editors - Stephen Cooley Linda Cooley We had another great get together at Cal State s Environmental Studies Area. As always, there was good food and good people Directors CSSA Representative Maynard Moe Past President Vonne Zdenek 2008 Chairpersons Hospitality - Bill McDonald Librarian Rose Mary Maguire Field Trips Lynn McDonald Historian Stephen Cooley Show & Sale Maynard Moe Material in The Cactus Patch may be reprinted by non-profit organizations (unless such permission is expressly denied in a note accompanying the material) provided that the proper credit is given to the BCSS & the author and that one copy of the publication containing the reprinted material is sent to the editor. Reproduction in whole or part by any other organization without the permission of the BCSS editor is prohibited. Contact thecactuspatch@aol.com 2 3

3 Cooking With Cactus Presented by Mary Carrisalez July s meeting will be Mary Carrisalez giving us another installment of Cooking with Cactus. Come to the meeting and learn how to do more with your cactus. Visit Us On The Web! Membership in the Bakersfield Cactus & Succulent Society costs $10 per year for an individual and only $15 a year for a family. This extraordinarily reasonable price not only includes twelve issues of but entitles you to participate in club field trips to far-off (out-of-town) and exotic places (more exotic than Bakersfield). You will also receive a nifty name tag that will be your ticket to a members only plant raffle. All this is in addition to the wonderful programs and people at the meetings. To become a member contact: Maynard Moe, treasurer Lithops44@cox.net 4 Plant of the Month Carnegia gigantea by Jack G. Reynolds I had two good ideas for plant of the month this month and both were stimulated by reading something in the media. I had to choose only one so I selected the Giant Saguaro. The other one is a secret for now but will be made known in time. The Nature Conservancy which I am a life member of sends, out a beautiful quarterly magazine and the summer issue this year has a wonderful article on the Giant Saguaro. Most of what you will read here comes from that article and from Britton and Rose. The Giant Saguaro is the symbol of the desert southwest and also of roadrunner cartoons. It grows in the Sonoran desert of Arizona and Mexico, where it prefers to live on rocky south facing slopes up to an elevation of 4,500 ft. (1,450 m.) Giant Saguaros may grow to a height of 35 ft. (11 m.). They grow very slowly however and ten year old seedlings may only be an inch and a half tall and it may take forty years for it to make its first meter of height. Large adult plants typically have two to eight arms which give them that very characteristic look that we all know and love. According to the Nature Conservancy the average life span of a seedling is only six weeks so one can see that adult plants must live many years and produce many 5

4 thousands of seeds in order to keep the population going. Tubular flowers are borne at the uppermost areoles. They are about three inches across and the same long, creamy white with hundreds of yellow anthers lining the tube. They are pollinated by bats which are attracted to the flowers by a ripe melon odor. The fruits are succulent and red in color and edible. Flowers are produced in May and June. The trunk is ribbed with ribs supported side by strong woody rods. After a good rainy season the plant may be up to 98% water which is stored in the trunk. The ribs allow the trunk to expand and contract to accommodate changes in volume. Native people used the rods from dead saguaros as building material and ate the seeds and fruits as well. Many animals make use of the saguaro by eating the fruits and seeds. Woodpeckers and owls nest in cavities dug into the tall trunks. Rapid human population growth in the range of the saguaros is removing habitat at an alarming rate. Even tough adult plants may be damaged or even killed by lightening as well as wind storms. Some also die from fungal attack if they are injured during the rainy season. 6 7

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6 Canadian Origins A Letter from Bruce May was a relatively quiet month. On the 1st we drove up to Fresno for the monthly Cactus & Succulent meeting. I took the lovely Echinopsis which had bloomed for mother s birthday on the 29th of April, but, although the flowers lasted until we reached Fresno, they folded by the time of the meeting. Fortunately I had a Gymnocalycium in flower as a backup. On the 6th we went to Macaroni Grill for Anne s birthday. We had no cake or candles, so Anne drew a three tiered affair on the paper tablecloth with the crayons provided. On the 13th the Echinopsis bloomed again, so I brought it to the Bakersfield C&SS meeting. Michael arrived by train with his parents at midnight going into the 9th. At 19:30 we saw Anne off on the airport bus to visit her son Daniel in South Dakota. On the 10th we saw Horton Hears a Who. I love Dr. Seuss, but the movie was too long and Michael got bored. It would have been better with sing able tunes. Michael and parents left again on the 11th. The Fresno Club had a show and sale on the 17th & 18th. There were lots of sale plants with gorgeous blooms. The exhibit was small but excellent and there was a whole table of raffle items. The May-June Cactus & Succulent Journal (U.S.) arrived on the 24th. The cover is a magnificent display of variation in flowers in a Polly and Cardoon population of Adenium oleifolia at Upington in South Africa. I had published two flower forms in the SW corner of Botswana in the 10 Dec issue of Asklepios, but I see a full house beats a deuce! The 27th was my brother Robert s birthday and we had a dinner at Alice s house (with cake and candles). Finally we ended the month with a concert of Men in Blaque, a men s choir directed by Joseph Huszti of UC Irvine. He had been choir director at BC when Polly and I were there so it was a nostalgic evening. But back to last year: On the 30th of July we went to Annapolis Royal which lies to the east of Smith s Cove. This was originally a French colony known as Port Royal. From 1606 to 1607 it was the first French colony in the New World. It was re-established in 1610 and is the oldest continually occupied European settlement north of St. Augustine, Florida. Beginning in 1621 there was a back-and-forth contest by the British, and eventually in 1713 it became British and headed the Acadian area (which was renamed Nova Scotia ) as the town of Annapolis Royal. We began at the Annapolis Royal Historic Botanic Garden. A large portion of this is reconstructed drained salt marsh as it would have been under the French. In wilder portions of the salt Tidal Generating Station at the Bay of Fundy 11

7 their culture including a panel of medicinal plants. At the garden in Annapolis I had bought a copy of Weeds of the Woods (Glen Blowin, 2004, Nimbus Pub., Halifax). Unfortunately these weeds are all woody and do not include succulents. It does contain good information on medicinal uses. For example among the many uses of Witch Hazel it says, It is reported that the Micmacs [Mi kmaq] of Nova Scotia steeped witch hazel twigs, soaked the liquid in a cloth and inhaled the fumes, apparently as an aphrodisiac and, coincidentally, to relieve headache. Andrena had this book as well as Noxious Weeds of Nova Scotia (Dept. of Agric. & Marketing ) which I later bought in Winnipeg. This latter has the more usual herbaceous weeds and has line drawings which are good for identification. Again, there are no succulents, but there are garden spurges (Euphorbia cyparissias and E. helioscopa ) which I did see at Smith s Cove. Bear River marsh there are small succulent Salicornia, Suaeda and Plantago plants. There is also a Maison Acadienne. Among the many displays, we once again found Cardoon. There is also an Alpine section which has a few succulents: Tradescantias, orpines and a spurge. We had a lovely sausage soup at the German bakery next to the garden. We toured the antique shops which occupy many of the old buildings in town and then slogged out to the Tidal Generating Station. This uses the steep tides of the Bay of Fundy (the steepest change in North America, although Anne says Alaska claims the title) to generate power. It is the only station of this kind in the New World. Afterwards we had a late lunch back in town at Anne s Restaurant and looked at Fort Anne. The next day we went south from Smith s Cove to Bear River. Here we had lunch at the Changing Tides Diner which is on stilts over the river. We also checked out a number of art and craft shops there. We then proceeded further inland to the Bear River First Nation Heritage & Cultural Centre where we met the Mi kmaq who had preceded the French. It was a good exhibit of 12 Bruce & Mi'kmaq canoe 13

8 ANNOUNCEMENTS INTERESTED IN PONDS/WATER GARDENS? Several members have shown an interest in ponds, and as luck would have it BCSS member Judy Domingos is hosting a meeting of the Bakersfield Koi & Water Garden Society on Saturday, July 12 at 10 AM. If you are interested you are welcome to attend. For more details contact the editor. UPCOMING EVENTS July 8 BCSS Meeting at 6:30PM Olive Dr. Church. program: Cooking With Cactus speaker: Mary Carrisalez Aug 12 BCSS Meeting (early?) at the Cactus Valley restaurant. Sept 9 BCSS Meeting at 6:30PM Olive Dr. Church. October Show & Sale! July Orange County CSS Summer Show & Sale Fullerton Arboretum, 12-4PM. (see page 14) Aug rd Anual Intercity Show and Sale LA County Arboretum, Arcadia, CA (see page 7) Aug 30 Succulent Symposisum, Huntington Botanical Gardens All day event with renowned speakers each year Nov 8-9 San Gabriel Valley Cactus and Succulent Society Show and Sale LA County Arboretum contact the editor for more information Stephen Cooley thecactuspatch@aol.com 15 14