Another early love of mine were the cacti.
Grown up in a part of the world where sometimes the sun can't be seen
for weeks, I often dreamt of visiting cacti in their subtropical
or tropical home land.
The combination of those two interests made me a cacti hybridizer. In
1986 I harvested my first seed pod from a Lobivia cross.
Hybridizing is a very time- and space-consuming work. So it is important
to pick only a few genera out of the big cactus family on wich to focus.
I decided to focus my hybridization work on Lobivia and Echinopsis because
of their beautiful flowers and in case of the true Echinopsis the fact
that the flowers are open night and day.
It is always a great day when one of the hybrid seedlings opens the
first flower 3 or 4 years after the seeds were planted.
Cactus hybridizers must have much patience. They have to think
in years or decades. I feel there is one disadvantage of my hybridization
passion: I only live in the future, not in the present time.
At the moment when I see a new hybrid flowering for the first time,
I already think about a good crossing partner for the next generation.
In case somebody likes one or the other of my hybrids I must say that most of the plants have not produced offsets that I am able to give away.
Enjoy the world of beautiful flowers with me. I am very interested in
your comments about this web site.
Click here to enter my Cactus picture gallery.
Want to see more beautiful tropical flowers?
Visit my
Hibiscus picture gallery !
And here is my
flower blog !
Contact: Frank Hoehnel (frank_hoehnel@hotmail.com)