This Purple Torch and others like it are located on the edge of development in Southwest Utah will soon be excavated for the next phase of a residential subdivision.
Does anyone have experience in transplanting a cactus like this? I’ve only transplanted Opuntia. Or maybe I should just let it live its life out in this spot until the dozers come and just collect fruits/seeds this summer for replanting?
For the record, this would not be poaching because I would be doing it with the developers’ permission.
by Hot-Knowledge-6637
9 Comments
dang i kinda want some these are cool
Assuming this genuinely will be destroyed then dig it up. I suspect it won’t stay together. But that is probably for the best as it increases the odds at least some pots survive. I’d do it soon as it will probably transplant now instead of the heat of summer.
That does not look like an easy or fun species to collect
Is there a cactus and succulent society in Utah? My local one does cactus rescues in situations like this. I just got a couple cactus that would have been destroyed due to a pipe line development recently.
I’ve successfully dug up large groups of these in NM. We have large acreage and built up a barn so I carefully relocated as many cactus in the area that would be built upon. My best advice is to scrape along the top soil about 2 feet in all directions, and then slowly scrape down with your fingers to find the roots. They will be incredibly long, but mostly just below the surface. You will the find the thicker, main roots in this process that root much deeper, and if you carefully scrape away with your fingers to as far as you can downwards, you can extract much of the root system in all directions. I’d say maybe 20 of the 25ish patches I collected were successfully relocated. Good luck!
Echinocereus are particularly easy to transplant. Don’t worry about getting a bunch of roots out. I would actually recommend trimming all the roots down to little nubs, then treat with equal parts sulfur, gypsum, and rooting hormone. Let dry, and treat like a cutting. It takes way less energy for them to grow new roots than to repair damaged ones
Those flowers. Save it!
This looks like st.goerge Utah! I own a nursery here and I go and save the native cacti! I’d love the location!
If you are indeed near st.goerge this is more than likely E. Relictus. An endemic to st.george!!!
It’s been threatened a lot due to construction, and nothing is being done.
It’s the ancestral diploid of E. Englemanii. Has half the chromosomes