Five-Spine Rating - 3^?

Yes - small container size plant. This variety will occupy a small flower pot comfortably and remain a manageable sized house plant.

This variety will do their best as houseplants with lots of sun and they become stressed with inadequate light which could result in poor health or even death.

Yes - does well with cool winter time temperatures. This variety will tolerate temperatures down below 50 °F. if the roots are kept dry, and will do very well in a home with energy saving thermostat setting.

Yes - easy care root system. This variety stores water in the parts of the plant which are above the soil leaving the root system small enough to fit into a proportionally sized flower pot.

This variety is unlikely to flower as a house plant and they should be chosen with flowering as a low priority.

Good locations

Potential living space locations include; East, West or South windows and three to four season rooms with partial shade are good, but it will grow better with more light. This species will tolerate very cool days and cold nights, but will need the temperatures to remain above 12 °F. If this variety is to be set outdoors during the growing season it needs to be in a location with plenty of sun and will tolerate lots of rain. It is important to expose this plant to very cold fall and spring weather in order to prompt it to bloom the following growing season. This can be accomplished by keeping it in an unheated room over the winter, or keeping it outdoors as long as possible in the fall and returning it to outdoor weather as soon as possible in the spring. This variation of Opuntia is much less able to tolerate cold weather than other varieties, and our outdoor rock garden varieties are available on our Cold Hardy Cacti page.

Size

The pads are usually over four inches long on this plant, and will grow very tall and also spread into a mat forming colony. There is only one plant now to purchase and it is smaller than the one in this photo. More plants will be available later in the fall of 2008.

Ancestry

Arizona, California (USA).

Plant Origin

Propagated by rooting pads by windowsillcactus.com., and the parent plant was grown from seed as one of our oldest collection plants. This plant is cold hardy down to 12 degrees and to the best of our understanding is: engelmannii or engelmannii var. lindheimeri.

Photo

Purchase price includes an Opuntia engelmannii potted in a plastic pot, and all plants are grown in their pots for at least one growing season before they are sold. All other items in photo are for demonstration purposes only, and the monopoly dogs are shown as a size & scale reference.

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Price: $29.00

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