Beautiful! So unfortunate that the flowers don't last long.

My previous comment's not showing up, so here goes again:

R,

Those are some great-looking plants and the Sclerocactus (I'd say that genus is for connoisseurs only, as difficult as it is to grow, at least for me) is sweet, as are the rest, but the Fero takes my #1 vote - really nice plant.

Speaking of F.w., at The Other Place it was posted about this a.m. - a yellow-flowering one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ferocactus wislizeni In The Breaking A.M. News

Lovely-I can never get enough of cactus flowers!

I too, am impressed with the Ferocactus. I only have one and I don't think it will ever bloom.

I have a few Notocactus and Echinopsis hybrids blooming, but we had heavy rain on Saturday that went through the shade cloth and it shortened the life of some of the hybrid flowers even more :-(. I hope the heavy rain is over for now.

I should have been more careful when I wrote that the F. wislizeni was "flowering for the first time"...in fact it was flowering for the first time FOR ME...it didn't do anything last year when I got it.

In fact, when I got it, there were seven or eight seed pods attached. IME (and confirmed by others), this is one of the easiest cacti to germinate, with nearly 100% germination, and the seedlings are almost bullet-proof. Here are mine after a bit longer than a year:

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It is also incredibly generous with its seed, and I have, erm, a few left over from the 7 or 8 pods. Anyone want a few thousand? :)

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Chris, thx for the link...but I'm surprised they're treating this as new news :) The TCSS have been propagating these for years and were kind enough to donate them so that each attendee at the 2009 CSSA conference got one as a gift. Here's mine, just developing the wide spines, and a long way from blooming!

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Cheers,
-R