Customer Reviews

500 Cacti: Species and Varieties in Cultivation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is quite an impressive little book. As the title tells us, it addresses 500 cacti. Now no book can cover them all. There are thousands of cacti genus out there. This work though goes along way in giving good information to the amature collector, grower, or in my case, photographer of these wonderful plants. The book is set up alphabetically by genus, but the wonderful photographs are just as valuable indentification. The book is filled with good growing and collecting tips. It is set up more like a field guide than a gardening book, something I find quite useful. The photographs are of good quality and when ever possible, show the plant in bloom. This is certainly one you will want to add to your collection.

I collect and grow cactus and feel this would be a great book to have in anyone's library of reference books. I cross checked some of this book's data with Edward Anderson's book, The Cactus Family "The Cactus Family" and found them to be accurate. "The Cactus Family" is considered by most to be THE definitive cactus resource.

Nearly all the photographs include a flower, but also have at least some of the body of the cactus which helps for identification purposes. The book is also laid out very nicely. Each page has a sidebar that includes anatomical data such as spine count, flowering time, and geographical distribution.

I was a little disappointed with the book. To be honest, I purchased this book to help identify the cheapo cacti I have purchased. Quite a few of the plants didn't have any kind of label on them for identifying their species. I live in the Mojave Desert where it gets cold in the wintertime. So it's a crapshoot on whether to keep them in pots so I can move them indoors for the winter or plant them in the ground.

While I was able to identify two of my $2.47 plants, I then had to go online to get the information I needed about whether it would survive in my climate. Many of the plants I couldn't identify didn't survive the winter or my rodents, so it's a moot point now. The golden barrel doing great and the old woman of the Andes is hanging on, so I'll stick to what works.

Most of the book is taken up with rare species, apparently collected by the author on numerous trips to super remote parts of the Andes. Not what a beginning cactus enthusiast is going to find at Home Depot. It's also pretty lacking, for me, in native North American cacti -- in which I am very interested.

So, if you're interested in learning about a newly discovered South American species that was discovered from a boat while the valley it lives in was flooding after the construction of a dam, go ahead and buy this book. But if you're trying to figure out the little pincushion cactus from the succulent garden your Mom brought back from Arizona, see if you can find this book at the library. But you'll probably do better looking online.

Attractive and interesting book. Good illustrations of cacti and very useful for identifying those lost labels or misnamed at the local garden centres.

I bought this book to find out what kind of cactus to purchase and to get some idea what the flowers would look like once put in a full sun area of my yard. I did not know there where so many cactus plants that have flowers. I did like this book. The book arrived in excellent condition and on time as promised.

This is a very good book for identifying many of the cacti that a serious collector would run across. 500 clear and close up pics cover a good number of the cacti currently available for sale.

Excellent book. Love how its organized. Gave this as a gift to my son who collects cacti. He loved it.

This book is a very good reference for cactus growers and also very good for identifying different species of cactus.

This book has many photos and objective description.

Good option to cati's student.