UPDATE: Confidence boosted by success with Molly, I've branched out (sorry) and now am tending to Flapjack, Fiesta, Letizia, three teeny Barrel cacti and one anonymous being. (Enlighten me if you know.)
So far, so good! Fiesta has three orange blooms, the wee barrel cacti are thrilled to be out of their tiny pot, Flapjack is amazing and I send Molly out on the balcony for playdates. Stay tuned.
Original Post:
Meet my Texas Nipple Cactus, whose Latin name is Mammillaria prolifera.
I call her Molly Ivins, because like that extraordinary journalist who made quite a reputation for herself writing about the Texas legislature, my cactus is prickly.
Except for the hardy 3.5’ tall ginkgo tree that lives in a giant pot on my balcony, Molly is my only plant. At one time, I had red geraniums blooming in a lovely blue pot on that same balcony, until three different plants got some nasty fungus that required I treat each leaf with a toxic substance every day.
Life is too short!
For a time, I also had a vigorous jade plant — a gift from a neighbor when I moved in — but it grew too big and heavy for me to lift, and I could no longer dump the rain out of its saucer. I’d been told that jade plants didn’t like to sit in standing water.
I’d also been told it was impossible to kill them, even if I didn’t dump the rainwater, but because I didn’t want to be the first person ever to do in a jade plant, I donated it to the office staff In my building, and it now lives on a first-floor patio with another jade plant.
So it’s just Molly and me, which is fine, because I’m more of a fauna person than a flora person. I’ve been watching whales in the wild since 1982, and I once hugged a friendly gray whale in San Ignacio Lagoon. In the Galapagos Islands, I snorkeled with reef sharks. And I’ve swum with rays off Hawaii’s Big Island.
At a zoo, I had the great privilege of giving a baby elephant his first solid food — a banana. Elsewhere at that zoo, I handed a blind, elderly rhino a piece of lettuce and offered a giraffe a slice of bread. Another joyous day, I petted a baby manatee in a tank in Orlando. Also, I’ve loved and nurtured four cats, three dogs and three parakeets.
In contrast, taking care of a Texas Nipple Cactus should be easy, but I fret about whether I’m doing a good job.
Molly had a rough start. I paid $5 for her in 2016, after my friend who owns Avenues Dry Goods, a great shop in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset, found the plant lying on its side in a gutter. She brought it into her shop, where I was up for an impulse buy.
“Just take it,” my friend said, but I wanted to be supportive of the new store. I paid and brought the cactus home, placed it on my desk and researched cacti.
Yikes — there are 1,500 different species! At last, along with a photo that looked just like my plant, I found this:
“A Texas Nipple Cactus is a low-growing cactus that forms a clump of dark green, globose or cylindrical stems with conic to cylindrical tubercles with clusters of spines at the tip. The stems are up to 3.6” tall and 2.8” in diameter.
"Each areole bears 25 to 40 radial and 5 to 12 central spines. The radial spines are hair-like, white or yellow, and up to 0.5” long, while the central spines are needle-like, 0.4” long, and white, yellow to reddish with a darker tip.
“Flowers appear in spring. They are yellowish-white, cream-colored, or pinkish-yellow with brownish midrib and up to 0.8 inches” in diameter. Fruits are scarlet, club-shaped to cylindrical, and up to 0.8” long."
Flowers? Haven’t seen a single one, but on three occasions, Molly has startled me with “fruits” that resemble teensy chili peppers. They are beautiful!
I also unearthed this tidbit: "Mammillaria is one of the largest genera in the cactus family, with currently 200 known species and varieties recognized. Most of them are native to Mexico, but some come from the southwest U.S., the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras."
At some point, I wondered whether Molly might enjoy a larger pot, so I drove her to a hardware store with a gardening department. A clerk there told me cacti like to be pot-bound, but mine probably did need food. She offered to sell me a 5-pound bag.
I explained that Molly was an only plant, with no siblings. The clerk laughed, and said she would pop Molly out of the pot, mix some food in the soil and water the cactus, all for free. Grateful, I bought a pretty red pot. That was pre-Covid, and I now fret that Molly may be hungry again.
That said, she is taller than ever. (See top photo.) I believe the sun gets credit for that. As much as I enjoy her presence on my desk, keeping me company as I write, it’s clear my little Texas Nipple Cactus likes a sunnier spot, so often I put her on the floor in front of the sliding glass door to my west-facing balcony. When the wind in San Francisco is calm (we get a lot of gusty days), I let her bask in the sunshine outside, often sharing space with the ginkgo.
Still, I think another trip to the gardening experts might be in order soon! I want Molly Ivins to be a happy cactus.
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