Mammillaria bocasana

Mammillaria bocasana is probably one of the first plants that many of us started off with. Easy to grow and propagate, they start flowering in the spring and are often one of the last cacti to flower at the end of the season. 

The flowers come in both cream and pink shades, followed by bright coloured seed pods that suddenly appear from the previous season's flowers. As you can see from the illustrations, the seed pods often form at the same time as the flowers. This year the seed pods gave an excellent display of their own at the end of summer. Must have been some very keen hoverflies pollinating last year.

I used to increase my stock by taking the pups off with a sharp clean knife but it took time for the parent plant to recover from this so now I mainly grow from seed.  Be aware that both slugs and mice are fond of the seed pods so take precautions against both. As much as I love seeing the seed pods on the plants (they make some lovely displays when there are few flowers about) I usually pick some off and keep them somewhere safe for sowing.

Seed sowing is straightforward, just scrape out the fresh seed (they form in a sweet smelling gel) onto a fine compost, keep damp and cover to keep Sciarid flies away. Germination is good and only takes a few weeks.

Going back to slugs, this is one of a few plants that slugs go mad for. They circle over the spines until they find a place to get their heads between the tubercles, then they will eat out the entire body of the cactus, leaving you with a pile of spines and not much else. I've lost entire rows of them overnight when I used to keep them on the floor of the polytunnel. I now keep them on tables to keep them away from the slugs but even doing this they still climb up and have a go at them. I go out regularly at night with a torch in the summer to keep an eye on them, as well as Mammillaria duwei which they can also smell from a mile away.

They grow reasonably fast from seed. When potting them on I select the ones that start pupping early to pot on as specimen plants, the single plants are just potted up for sale. In habitat they come from Northern Mexico where they live at altitude on volcanic soil, as well as at the foot of a hill in semi desert. I use my standard compost with grit and feed once a month in summer with a dilute tomato feed (higher in potash and phosphate and lower in nitrogen) Like most cacti they like a good drink (I only use rainwater) but will not tolerate the roots staying damp. 

All in all, they are lovely plants to grow, but do be aware of the hooked spines, they're not really suitable for small children, pets or anyone with wooly cardigan sleeves.