Gems from the greenhouses of Woody Minnich

Before anything else, I would like to thank my Tita Mila Magsaysay-Valenzuela for sending me some cuttings of a wonderful climbing epiphytic cacti from Central America, which I believe to be Selenicereus grandiflorus, the "Queen of the Night" cactus aptly named for its huge, white nocturnal flowers which open only for a few hours in one night. By the following morning, the flowers are usually hanging down, slack and withering. These flowers often have a strong vanilla fragrance which is truly appealing, not just to the viewer but to numerous nocturnal insects that are attracted by both the sight of the huge white flower and its wonderful scents.

Once the buds have grown fat and are ready to open, it is worthwhile to stay up from early evening into the night and watch the flowers unfold before your very eyes – truly a sight to behold! You may even want to have dinner out in the garden as you witness this wonderful act of Mother Nature. One of the great things about this species from Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica is that it has fully adapted to our local, tropical climate, including our torrential monsoons. I am sure many of us have seen these wonderful cacti snaking around garden walls across the metropolis. I’m going to plant the cuttings right by one of my garden walls. With good care, I expect these to bloom in a year or two, and I’ll write more about it then. Thanks, Tita Mila!

Now for the topic at hand. I had a chance to visit one of the most famous and very best growers and collectors of cacti in the world, Wendell "Woody" Minnich, proprietor of Cactus Data Plants in Littlerock, California, just northeast of Los Angeles in the California desert. Woody is a professor with an absolute passion for succulents. He has been visiting Mexico for decades, photographing plants in their habitats and studying their natural behaviors. He is one of the global authorities on the desert flora of Mexico. He is also very knowledgeable of the succulent life in Central and South America, having made numerous expeditions to these parts of the world as well.

Woody has authored numerous publications on these subjects and is frequently published and featured in the Journal of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, the largest publication on succulents in the world. He is also a favorite on the cacti and succulent lecture circuit in the US.

But Woody is, to my mind, first and foremost a lover and collector of these gems. Some of his plants in his private collection are truly unique, one-of-a-kind specimens that you will never see anywhere else. Woody probably has the best ariocarpus collection in the whole world, a collection which was spiced up by the acquisition of Bob Kent’s ariocarpus collection many years ago. Some of our readers may recall my feature on Bob Kent, who is the premier private collector of haworthias, my other most favorite genus. Woody also has an exquisite collection of copiapoas, those wonders from the Chilean desert coastline. As an example of the quality and exquisiteness of his plants, during the 2001: A Cactus Odyssey 16th Annual Inter-City Cactus and Succulent Show held at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, Woody garnered the top prizes for seven of the competitive categories: Best ariocarpus for a monstrous multi-headed specimen of Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus v. elephantidens, best gymnocalycium, best astrophytum, best native US cactus, best miniature cactus where he exhibited the newly discovered but increasingly available Mammillaria luethyi, best Argentine cactus for Parodia penicillata, and best Chilean cactus for a massive clump of Copiapoa hypogaea.

Woody’s nursery and greenhouses in Littlerock are about an hour-and-a-half drive from the Los Angeles airport, a pleasant drive through the California desert. He has several greenhouses, a couple for his wonderful private collection and the others for his sales greenhouses. The plants featured in this article are only from his sales greenhouses. I wasn’t able to photograph his private collections, but as you can see from the photos, his sales plants are of the highest quality as well. I asked Woody how he stocked his collections and he said that he acquired quite a number of specimens from other collectors through the years.

While I was impressed with practically all his plants, what caught my fancy were the massive and very old specimen clumps of various copiapoa species. I find that copiapoas actually do quite well in the Philippines, generally producing true growth and spine formation in our environment. While Copiapoa cinerea is everyone’s favorite, Woody’s clump of Copiapoa zungistaminea was truly special with its wonderful coloration, jet-black spination and creamy yellow wool at the apex of each head.

Another Chilean group of cacti that I fancy are the neochilenias, which some experts lump under a bigger genus called neoporteria. This genus of globular to elongated cacti often have brownish or grey coloration, with radially symmetrical flowers that arise close to the growing point of the species. Two of my favorites are N. esmeraldana and N. paucicostata. The former is from Esmeraldas in Northern Chile and illustrates the flat, brown body and short spines prevalent in a number of species in the group. The latter shows the wonderful, blue-grey-green coloration of the plant body which is coveted by many collectors.

Woody has a fabulous mammillaria collection, and one of my favorites is M. herrerae with its beautiful, geometrically precise snow-white spination. Discovered more than 50 years ago, this plant continues to be rare in cultivation due to the difficulties in vegetative propagation. It does not flower readily in cultivation, so seed production is scarce. Also, due to the inaccessibility of its native sites in Vista Hermosa and Queretaro, Mexico, it has only a sparsely scattered distribution, occurring in limestone pockets filled with gravel and loamy soil.

Finally, what cactus collection would be complete without Cephalocereus senilis, the "Old Man Cactus" named for its long white hairs that envelope the entire body. This plant is from Hidalgo and Guanajuato, Mexico where it occurs on steep slopes along the deep valleys of the Tulancingo River system where the climate is warmer than on the surrounding Mexcian plateau into which these valleys are carved. This species, which attains heights of more than 20 feet in the wild, is now protected by the Mexican government.

I must say I spent a truly wonderful day at the Cactus Data Plants Ranch of Woody Minnich. And I learned many do’s and don’ts from one of the world’s master growers. I hope to visit Woody again some day, and the next time around, I promise to take photos of his truly prized specimens.

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E-mail the author at succulentophile@ yahoo.com.