Showing posts with label succulents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label succulents. Show all posts

Monday, September 24, 2012

A law on cruelty to plants?

My craze for Epiphyllum oxipetalum, the Queen of the Night, triggered a latent succulent inclination. I will not put its photo here as I've done so many times in the past. So I went out and took some photos if not in our garden, at least from our neighbor's yard. I agree they are so beautiful in the desert, here i don't see much flowers from them, maybe the reason they are maligned and abused. And nothing seems to get most of that battering than this Opuntia below. I saw this in a resort's ground near the beach in Siquijor. There is only one plant there, and many young visitors trying to leave a mark that they were here write something on the leaves.  If only that plant can speak, i am sure it is terribly crying. Nobody seems to care because a plant can't run. Maybe I am wrong with my first premise, so I will reverse it, the plant doesn't flower because it was much abused. What about that?


We have a law about cruelty to animals, but cruelty to plants is not yet in our collective unconscious!

Euphorbia trigona (thanks to LT Expanded for the ID lead), is often used here as marginal borders to limit intrusion. It grows dense and profuse that nothing but small rodents and insects will be able to pass through the small spaces between them. Sometimes free ranged chickens can. The above photo is the top portion of the photo below, before they are pruned. The bottom is sometimes used to lay down things to dry. If constant pruning like this is done to other plants, they might die, but succulents are plants difficult to kill. 

                                   
It wont take months before the above photo will again be fully growing and fully green. 

Above photo is also very thorny just like the previous plant, however its trunks are more rounded and the thorns are really hard and scary. This is the thorn of crowns, or the Euphorbia millii.  In the past few years it was introduced here and everybody seems to be planting them, many varieties are available and all households joined planting. Afterwards, the craze stopped and now they have problems in disposing the scary trunks. They just don't die on their own, wherever you put them. Trying to dry them under the sun is futile, they will come to life when the rains come. I cannot discourage my mother to join the craze, now the problem of disposing is with me!

 But just looking at the flowers will really captivate anyone. I cannot blame my mother for being very attracted. You have to be an owner before acknowledging its hazards later on. She planted four colors. Even if two of them were planted in pots, they managed to grow roots via the pot hole and completely strengthened its growth from the soil. Now 2 of them are 2 meters high and can be used as a deadly weapon! Grrrr!


Above is also a lovely plant, the mother of thousands or Kalanchoe daigremontiana. It attracted me too! The many plantlets along every leaf, one each from every notch is really amazing. My mother again succumbed to its bewitching beauty. Today after two years of having it in the property, disposal and eradication is again our problem. I bet those plantlets carried by the eroding soil and effluents during the rainy season will be deposited in some areas and properties in the vicinity. We are in the uplands, and I am sure this is happening at a rapid rate. They will just die when put into burning embers. Another GRRRR! 

Now, I don't know if cruelty to plants should be done into law! I am also one of the abusers. But at least for me i do it following the law of the Survival of the Fittest. Charles Darwin thank you.

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