Cactus Kate

Description

Trichocereus bridgesii (Bolivian Torch) — Cactus Kate is one of the most sought-after bridgesii clones in US collections, grown here outdoors in full Southern California sun.

Cactus Kate is a prized collector Trichocereus clone from our Southern California collection, cut to order and shipped grower-direct. Loved for its handsome columnar form and tidy ribbing, this select cutting is a standout in any ornamental cactus lineup or landscape planting. It is sold as a Cut to Order cutting from our own mother plants. Care: bright light, fast-draining cactus mix, and sparing water once established.

📖 Read Cactus Kate's lineage & community history on the San Pedro wiki →

The story behind Cactus Kate

Kate ran a nursery up in Watsonville, on California's central coast, back when almost nobody was paying attention to the bridgesii rows she kept there. Her plants only became a name people chased after she was gone: a collector named Verne Robinson got hold of the material and put it back into circulation, and from there it moved grower to grower until "Cactus Kate" became shorthand for a particular look. Whether every plant wearing that label traces to one mother, or whether several of her bridgesii got swept under a single convenient tag, is still argued about in collector circles. We sell it under collector convention rather than pretend the paper trail is cleaner than it is.

What you can count on is the plant itself. Mature stems carry five to seven ribs on a chalky blue-green body, and the areoles hold honest needle spines in the one-to-three centimeter range, pale grey aging toward light brown against that frosted skin. It clumps instead of standing alone, so an established patch reads as a thicket rather than a single pole. Every cutting comes off our own outdoor stock, sun-hardened, cut fresh for your order and callused here for about two weeks before it ships, and when the rows need a season to recover the drop list is how you hear that Kate is back.

Compare Cactus Kate with the other named clones in our guide to named collector clones, or read up on the species in our Trichocereus bridgesii buyer’s guide.