At long last three of the flowers on the Brighamia have now opened. They are creamy yellow and about an inch across, carried on a tube which is about three inches long. I can imagine that if I did manage to obtain any pollen I would have to slit open the tube in order to pollinate the flower. I don’t have to worry about this yet as I haven’t found anyone with a plant in flower at the moment.  I will keep trying.

Mammillaria plumosa has started to flower, a sure indicator that winter has arrived. The flowers are pale yellow, so near the colour of the spines that they could easily go unnoticed.   Uninteresting though they are it is nice to have something which will flower throughout the dark months. This is one of the few cacti that I do give a little water to about once a month throughout the winter.  The others to which I show the watering are the larger Notocacti and Leuchtenbergia principis. Of course the Christmas cacti will need watering too. Most of these seem to have good fat buds on them already so it is likely that they will have finished flowering by the time Christmas comes.

My good intentions about not watering Lithops too late in the season came to nothing.  Looking at the plants yesterday I could not understand why they were so plump when I have not watered them for some weeks.  Further investigation showed that they had been drenched when the strong winds had driven the rain in under the top of the greenhouse roof, in fact some of the plants were standing in water.  Since the weather is so mild and the wet ones are in a heated greenhouse they should not suffer too much damage.  I will have to find a way to prevent this from being repeated.

I had a visit this month from Brian Gibbs who photographed some of the plants and has displayed them on the photo gallery of the website.  Have a look at them – they (the photographs) are very good.

http://home.freeuk.com/wiltshirecacti/gallery_index.htm