I am a plant killer. I’ve bought (and been given) many plants over the years but none of them have ever survived. I’m known around my household as having a black thumb; I’m either putting too much water or not enough, or giving plants too little sunshine or too much. With me there’s no happy medium – unfortunately it’s the plants that pay the price.

Fortunately for me, Rene is an excellent gardener. (Well, brilliant compared to me.) Rene has kept plants alive for years, and has even propagated a few species in his collection. That, to me, is impressive. Part of the reason for his success is the type of plant he cares for – succulents and cacti. According to him, these are the easiest plants to maintain because they are hardy, don’t need much water and love the sun. They are the best kinds of plants to grow in California.

Because of Rene’s interest in these plants we are constantly looking for new varieties to add to his collection. He’s got quite a collection, and we are always on the lookout for new acquisitions. Luckily for us there was a cactus and succulent show here in LA two weekends ago, organized by the Los Angeles Cactus & Succulent Society.

The show was free to the public, and upon entry visitors were handed two raffle tickets. The raffle tickets were used to cast votes for the Best Display and Most Informative exhibits (these were not the actual categories but a good description of what we were asked to judge). To me, nothing says I like you more than asking for my opinion. It’s not that I have such an interesting take on things – it’s that I like helping people make a decision.

Our tickets in hand, we walked around the room and examined every table. For Best Display Rene and I chose this one, a table full of strange and striking plants from Madagascar:

For Most Informative I chose this display, which talked about a specific plant variety found in the Yucatan Peninsula:

Rene found this display more informative, an exhibit on how plants are named (this one was appropriately called sinilis, or old):

The actual winners were:

Best Display

Most Informative

(P.S. Our picks ended up winning second or third place in both categories. I say they were robbed!). Click here for more pictures from the show.

After the show we visited the vendor area, where we bought two new plants. One was called Drunkard’s Dream, which I don’t have a picture of. According to the guy that sold us the plant, who may or may not have been on something, the ends of the plant look like miniature beer bottles. Unless this plant grows to be the size of an orange tree I don’t see how it anyone could mistake the shapes in this little plant for beer bottles. Perhaps beer for Thumbelina?

I love finding events like the Succulent & Cactus Show. LA is such a big place, and it always thrills me to discover a new facet of the city that I’ve never seen before.