Although I keep swearing I'll stop buying cacti with hooked spines, it's always a case of "Ooh, look at that interesting shape"
Bombycina is highly variable and a clumping cactus: some are fluffy and then there's this one. I think the aureole spines are particularly attractive so... I saw it the last time I went to the garden centre and it was still there when I went back.
No choice but to come home with me.
So how did you finally stop killing cacti?
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Stopped watering them. Put them in pots and left them outside to do their thing and feel the seasons
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And then you are rewarded with flowers: they don't really flower indoors
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Most seem to need a rest and a colder, dry season. Light has very little to do with it
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That is a beauty! Cacti are like lithops haha: you can never have just one
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Nope! For a long time I refused to buy cacti because I killed too many except one that was utterly bullet-proof. Also a hook-spined Mammillaria clumper that is hell to repot and weed. I've had it for about 15 years now
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Tongs or leather welding gloves?
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Not a fan of tongs, except for weeding. They get stuck to the gloves too. I just resign myself to pulling out a few spines as I try to extricate the gloves from the cactus
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There really isn't a good solution unless you can find something tough and smooth (and inflexible)
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Nope. Even taking this home was messy, the spines got entangled with the shade netting I bought. Somehow I managed to extricate it one spine at a time and only one got pulled off
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