#pencil cactus | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crudlynaturephotos · 11 days

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#prickly pear #opuntia #cactus fruit #pencil cactus #firesticks #euphorbia tirucalli #succulents and cacti #palm tree #san diego

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allaroundtheworld55 · 1 month

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#55 #pencil cactus #begonias #Strobilanthes #atlanta botanical gardens #maurice small

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dogtorari · 6 months

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💚

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hollow-head · 3 months

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🌱☀️

#mygoart #doodle because i am sitting here looking at my pencil cactus that is trying to get to the other side of the kitchen #but there's no room for it there!#good omens fanart

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theplantgay · 2 years

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I took a cutting (well, actually, a few) from a medium-sized indoor plant that I thought looked cool back in January. (In a house it might be considered on the larger size, but this was in a science classroom that was covered in plants, and had more space. The smallest plants there were medium sized houseplants.)

The cutting has finally been potted, after 8 months, and looks like this:

[ID: A close-up picture of two cuttings that are made up of straight, thin green parts (it’s unclear whether they’re leaves or stalks) that are connected to each other in a fractal pattern, somewhat how sticks from a tree are shaped. They sit in freshly watered dirt in a black pot.]

I used this app called PictureThis (which I really like, but that’s another post) to identify the plant, and it told me that it was a Pencil Tree.

Please remember, I took these cuttings from a medium-large indoor plant. Not a tree. I don’t even remember any part of the plant that wasn’t made up of these green stalk/leaf parts! But looking at other pictures of Pencil Trees, there’s no doubt that this is one. They are a weird tree.

I mentioned this to my grandmother, who remembered that her neighbor said that they had a Pencil Tree in their yard. She used a different plant identification app, and it confirmed it.

This is the picture she sent me of that Pencil Tree:

[ID: There is a tall tree with what appears to be long, thin leaves. Behind it is a single-story house, and blocking the base of the tree from view is a wooden fence that reaches just below the roof of the house. The tree is growing in the corner between the fence and the house, and is significantly taller than both. Roughly a third to a half of the leafy section of the tree is in the picture, and it suggests that the tree is at least two stories tall.]

These are the same species of plant.

To add to just how odd these plants are, the thin green parts of the cuttings and long thin leaves of the tree I described earlier? It turns out that those are their branches.

They do have leaves- they appear as new branches sprout, but once the branches mature, they go away. Because I guess it’s more energy efficient if the parts of you that are supposed to transport energy and nutrients also take in energy for you. Who needs leaves when your branches can photosynthesize?

Another name for the Pencil Tree is the Pencil Cactus, because what I just described sounds a lot like how cacti operate, and so many people assume it’s a cactus, but nope! It is a succulent, but not all succulents are cacti.

Some succulents (including cacti) use their stems as the main way they photosynthesize, so while the Pencil Tree is not unique in this, I still find it fascinating that it uses its stems/branches to photosynthesize, just because we’re so used to thinking of photosynthesis as a thing leaves do.

Another fun thing about the Pencil Tree— they are highly toxic in basically every way (which is common for plants in their genus, Euphorbia). They’re poisonous if ingested and can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. They also produce a toxic latex compound (their sap, just touching the plant won’t expose you to it) that can cause redness, severe itchiness and burns, and if it gets in your eyes, vision issues as severe as temporary blindness.

Despite all this, they’re fairly popular indoor plants! They’re easy to take care of, like many succulents, as long as they get enough light. In colder months, their stems supposedly turn yellow, orange, and red, too!

They’re also super easy to propogate. I took my cuttings (snapped off at the nodes, always make a clean a cut as possible at the node for good results), put them in an old pill bottle filled most of the way with water, and just forgot about them. I potted them after 8 months, but they could have easily been potted after four, or even sooner, I just procrastinated.

And these cuttings I have of this weird, wonderful plant? They’re coming to college with me! I’m lucky they haven’t become tree-sized yet.

#pencil tree #pencil cactus #plantblr #plants #plant blog #this plant is wild and I love it #I had to pick and choose which facts I wanted to share about it because there’s so much more

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ripleycyberautumn · 1 year

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Fucking COOKED on this silly shit A WHOLE MEAL right before my eyes i love me some silly plants! I don’t play gw2 but as a wee lad i played the first ever pvz and was very bad

Love color pencils and crap ass markers on sum good ol Copy paper . Trad art is my strongest point

#gw2 #pvz #peashooter #sunflower pvz #cactus pvz #stuffy sunflower #plants vs zombie garden warfare 2 #plants vs zombies #art #traditional art #pencil art

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nightwere-mojo · 6 months

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Hylictober 2023 Prompt 6: Harvest - (Comfort) - Trick

Maybe more of an accident than a trick. Some wild Lullaby saplings have started to develop the traits of flora shared where they sprouted. Furthermore, their only defense mechanisms this young are burrowing, fleeing, or biting. Sorry, Wayne!

#hylictober 2023 #hylics #wayne #ohuhu markers #prismacolor pencils #ink #mojos art #lullaby sapling fanon #the 'vegetable' / cactus version #(I broke a one-color per prompt rule I made for myself)#(because Wayne without yellow felt wrong)

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asketchy-kaseadilla · 9 months

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