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Greenery
A word about cacti and other succulents. Some
grow quickly. Many do not. Some seem not to grow at all, and you
might mistake them for dead. And they might be dead, but then again,
they might not.
This was driven home to me
one day when an old cleistocactus that had done virtually nothing
for twenty-five years suddenly burst into bud, all up and down its
stem. It seemed to happen
overnight. A few weeks later
the buds became flowers, gorgeous long, tubular, crimson blooms.
From that point on the plant flowered continuously for more than a
year. Now it's stopped, but its neighbor, a chunky cereus peruvianus,
known as much for the slowness of its growth as for its gnarled and
twisted shape, has pushed out a full two inches of new greenery. And
the aloe ferox, which has grown steadily for more than a decade but
never replicated, has, at last, given birth to a scion. Which, it
hardly bears mentioning, the echeverrias, haworthias, echinopses and
pachyphytums did a good long time ago.
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