Why Do We Have Such Unattractive Cactuses and Succulents in Our Environment?
In Lewis Carroll's absurdist poem "The Hunting of the Snark," published in 1876, a group of intrepid characters, including a baker, a lawyer, and a beaver, set out to capture a Boojum, a mythical creature so repulsive that looking at it will make one "softly and gently vanish away."
The Los Angeles location of the Cactus Store, a bicoastal store and creative studio specialising in rare and unusual xerophytic plants, or drought-tolerant plants, welcomes guests with a potted Boojum tree (Fouquieria columnaris), a succulent native to the Valley of the Candles in Baja California, and a plaque inscribed with an excerpt from the poem. The Boojum, one of two plants in a shaded courtyard next to a greenhouse that the shop keeps as a specimen library, is roughly the size of an adult human. It looks like an upside-down parsnip with a dense mane of spiky, leafy branches that resembles a broom, prompting the English botanist and explorer Godfrey Sykes to name the species after Lewis Carroll's boogeyman in 1922. The succulent has an almost humorously awkward form, like many species in the Cactus Store's collection, even though it may not be horrifying enough to make a spectator faint.
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Even though it may be argued that all of nature's creations are lovely, an ugly subset of houseplants is starting to gain popularity. People are adopting "a collector's mind-set and are looking for the more weirdo thing," according to Alika Cooper, 44, the Los Angeles-based artist and horticulturist behind the garden consulting company Chthonic Ivy. This is because the pandemic has reoriented more of us toward domestic activities, such as caring for potted plants. She has gained recognition in the art world for her Plant Sale, a pop-up market for unusual plants that has been held at the Vielmetter gallery and the headquarters of the nonprofit arts organisation Los Angeles Nomadic Division. These plants include bulbous, shaggy sea onions and ox tongue, a succulent with fleshy, oblong segments.
Domestic plant types that are visually off-balance are frequently more fascinating to the trained eye, just like the human face is. To live among caudiciforms, which have protruding water and nutrient storage organs that enable them to endure droughts and live for hundreds of years, one must be somewhat of a botany nerd. One species, the elephant's foot (Dioscorea elephantipes), has a bloated, woody base textured with raised hexagons that, when combined, could be mistaken for a distended tortoiseshell. The same can be said for a subset of succulents that convincingly resemble rocks and toads, such as those belonging to the Lithops genus (named after the ancient Greek words for "stone" and "face"), which are squat bisectional nubbins with surface patterns reminiscent of cerebral cortices, and Pseudolithos cubiformis (meaning "false stone"), a pillowy square with pimply rept These odd shapes are also evolutionary adaptations that serve as cover from hungry predators.
Pseudolithos cubiformis, Echinocereus schmollii, a Mexican cactus, and Pseudolithos migiurtinus, a Somalian succulent with sour flowers, are shown in clockwise order from the left.
Pseudolithos cubiformis, Echinocereus schmollii, a Mexican cactus, and Pseudolithos migiurtinus, a Somalian succulent with sour flowers, are shown in clockwise order from the left.
"I think storytelling is part of the appeal," says Christian Cummings, 43, a partner in the Cactus Store with Carlos Morera, 38, and Max Martin, 36; Cummings, Morera, and Martin all have backgrounds in art and design and have expanded the platform beyond horticulture to include clothing, lawn furniture, ceramics, and books. The business was founded in 2014 with the architect Jeff Kaplon, 41. Cummings pointed out an Aztekium ritteri, a tiny, wrinkled cactus with fractalized swirls that he likens to "Yoda-like" swirls, during a recent visit to their studio. In Nuevo León, Mexico, the native variety of the plant develops so slowly that during the first few years of its existence, it never exceeds the size of a sand grain. According to Cummings, the specimen in his store took 25 years to reach the size of a blueberry.
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