Blooms and spikes, an April visit to Cistus Nursery

Last Thursday marked the 8th Annual Pre-Hortlandia Plant Nerd Field Trip for my friends and I. Our core group remains almost the same, although sadly over the years we've had one of the original members drop away (life gets complicated), but there are four or five of us that have been at it more or less since the beginning, I feel lucky in that I've been on all eight of the outings.

This year's adventure was fairly low key, we revisited some of our old-standby nurseries (Garden Fever, Xera, Means, Joy Creek and Cistus) rather than travel across great distances to investigate new ones. Tomorrow I'll share my haul, but today I just wanted to share some moody photos I took at Cistus. The day started out rainy but ended up sunny, sunny skies with the filtered light of hoop-houses makes for photo magic. No specific ID's for most of these images, but I can at least name the Genus. We'll start with a few Echium...

This foliage reminds me of the epic E. rocket that bloomed in my garden several years ago (here).

Anigozanthos

Leucadendron

Banksia
Banksia bloom
Lewisia

Beschorneria
Tree fern of some sort...fuzzy!
Yucca faxoniana
One of these came home with me...
Agave bulbils
Didn't get any info on this darling little cactus.
Because I hustled out to the Opuntia-lands for some spike appreciation.

Anyone who thinks Opuntia are boring has no idea of the variations.

There's the man himself, Sean Hogan among the spikes...
Like all good things it was eventually time to walk away (from the cactus)...

This spiky vignette is what currently greats visitors to "the big top" (aka the nursery proper)...

And inside the big top...

Yucca rostrata (oh my!)...

Dykia

And it's time to leave...

Weather Diary, April 16: Hi 52, Low 42/ Precip .09"

All material © 2009-2018 by Loree Bohl for danger garden (dg). Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.