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If you love having growing things in your home but just can’t seem to keep houseplants alive, try growing a few cacti.
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This under-appreciated plant actually grows best when it’s pretty much left alone. Just give it plenty of sun, water it once or twice a month, keep it away from drafts – and it might just outlive you.
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Once you get to know these prickly little guys, you can’t help but admire their tenancy. I rescued mine from next to a neighbour’s trash about ten years ago, and it’s not only doing fine, but sends up a teeny fluorescent-pink flower once in a while.
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True cacti (and yes, you can say cactuses if you prefer) originate from desert regions all over the world, though they rarely get quite as large in our homes as they do in the wild. Dozens of different kinds are popular as houseplants; as with orchids, there are people who specialize in them and grow nothing else.
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Among the most familiar are bunny ear (Opuntia microdasys), with its flat oval pads that stick up from a central oval; prickly pear (Opuntia ssp.), with rounded, larger flat pads; old man cactus (Cephalocereus senilis), with its coating of fine white hairs like an old man’s beard (but don’t be fooled and try to stroke it – the spines are hidden underneath the beard!); and columnar cacti, like Pilosocereus.
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The desert is a pretty tough place to grow up in. So over time, these remarkable plants evolved a number of survival strategies that make them unique in the plant kingdom. In fact, cacti rank among the toughest and most long-lived of all growing things, with individual specimens sometimes living for hundreds of years.
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One of many oddities about this class of plants is the way they perform photosynthesis: instead of opening their pores during the day to “breathe” (exhale oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide) like most plants, cacti actually open them at night, to minimize water loss.
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A single cactus is a highly efficient water conservation system; in the wild, even a modest-sized plant can collect and retain gallons of water from one rainstorm, which might not recur for another year. Some have vanes that swell as they fill with water, then slowly shrink as the stores are depleted. That water, as you can imagine, is very tempting to other desert dwellers; their spines are actually modified leaves, which evolved to protect the plant from thirsty thieves.
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These same survival traits mean it’s well-equipped to survive on a windowsill in your home, as long as you respect its desert heritage. The first rule is lots of sun – at least six hours a day. A cactus that is starved for light tends to get pale, sickly and sometimes long and weird-looking. If you don’t have a south- or west-facing window, grow lights are a good substitute.
