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Opuntia humifusa    7/15/21
I bought 100 seeds for this native of New Jersey shortly after settling into my newly built greenhouse in 2004 in Los Alamos. I wanted a cold-hardy prickly pear for grafting. The plants grew from the seeds and I never got around to doing any grafting with them. I just moved the plants out of my way as my collection grew. They finally wound up about ten years ago permanently in the shade of the big ponderosa pine that's in my front yard and which has been part of the support of the shade cloth house I re-build every spring as the summer home for my cacti. Their roots went past their disintegrating pots and into the ground. Then, a few years ago, the flowering started. Given that the plants almost never get a lot of good sunlight, I was amazed. Very pretty intensely pure yellow flowers. They've started to make good fruit with seeds. I'm not a real fan of prickly pears, but this one's a keeper. Maybe I'll use a piece to graft something.   (037/112)   

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