Even if you don’t have room on your greenhouse bench for another cactus, you might consider this variety for a hanging basket. Echinocereus scheeri is a widespread and variable species with regard to stem length, density of spination, and flower color—ranging from short clumping to sprawling in habit, densely-spined to near nude, and with showy trumpet-shaped flowers in a spectrum of colors from pink to orange to scarlet. Subspecies gentryi is distinctive in having stems with only 4 or 5 ribs (rather than 6 to 10) and very fleshy, nearly nude, cucumber-like stems that often hang from cliff faces in the northwest Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. They can blush magenta during the cool winter months and bear pink flowers in late spring. HBG 98573. $7.
Published in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, Vol. 81 (2), March - April, 2009