Saturday, October 29, 2005

How the Penis Cactus got its name

Yet another slightly off topic and probably not entirely politically correct post, but I couldn’t help noticing the similarity of my monstrose Trichocereus bridgesii (Echinopsis lageniformis) and its more famous namesake ;-)

Penis Cactus / Penis Plant - monstrose Trichocereus bridgesii
Penis Cactus - monstrose Trichocereus bridgesii

According to Uhlig Kakteen the German name for this cultivar is ‘Frauenglück’, IMHO a more poetic description than the English moniker.

Penis Cactus / Penis Plant - monstrose Trichocereus bridgesii - The Full Monty
Penis Plant - The Full Monty

These days I maybe ought to have put a “Warning: Explicit Language” label on a post like this.

12 comments:

  1. I don't understand why you jokingly suggest you ought to have put a “Warning: Explicit Language” label on this post, or why you say the post is "not entirely politically correct". It's people like you who bandy about phrases like "politically correct", which you clearly don't know the meaning of, and talk about "explicit language" when there is none, who perpetuate the kind of 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink' attitude to something as simple and everyday as a penis that is keeping the whole of Western civilisation imprisoned in some kind of eternal guilty childhood. Couldn't you have made this post without the kind of red-faced self-conciousness indicated by your two superfluous comments. Sheesh Ganesh!

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  2. Some of us cactus collectors try to keep a scholarly attitude in our postings. Unfortunately in most schools, penis discussions are not "politically correct". Especially with recent media coverage focusing on teachers getting caught and publicly prosecuted for their inappropriate sexual relationships with their students.

    Furthermore, some non-cactus collectors may scrutinisticly assume that the reason one may collect such a phallical plant is either a perverted attempt at overcompensation for their own genitalia or because they're just a homo. Such scrutiny is unwarranted and objectionable to the collector.

    "Uhuhuhuh he said wang" [/beavis&butthead]

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  3. More information about the penis plant cactus is to be found on wikipedia .

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Plant

    Because this blog is about how this cactus got its name rather than about the penis plant cactus itself; I hope the following poetry adequately illustrates the dilemma of this growing penis head farm , in short order .
    Also , what is your actual interest in the nomenclature of the penis plant ? Do you wish to grow cacti , eat them or cram them up your ass and giggle about the name or appearence of the penis plant ? What makes you tick - cacti or dick ?

    by Steven Jesse Bernstein:
    This clouded heart where the rain begins and the traffic dies.
    We cry a little because of the bricks showering from the broken buildings, the windows divided into pieces of pictures, the incomplete dirt and sallow gardens.
    There is a girl, she doesn't know what her breasts are for and holds them up curiously with her fingers.
    Her eyes are two wagons gone off down different sidewalks pulled by boys with playing cards in their pants, who can't read their hands, who's goodbye mouths sail higher and higher. The soles of their shoes are virgins. This is a neighborhood of padded mud, wheels gone all the way, kisses like the electric wires inside eels, nervous knives, pretty pistols, mothers, gods, fathers, cops, leaning with shame. The deteriorated winter is yellow and its cruel dust is everywhere, on the handlebars, stair rails, steeples, old broken off rooftops that smell like moldy sausage. The boys shake out their cards in the dark but there is only one girl in the whole city and she is pregnant. All have the same mother, went on the same vacation, father toot-toot like oranges against the skyscraper; could be that man, could be that one. An avalanche of fathers that kill you with snakes, with beliefs that are the invention of snakes. Here is an eye and here is an eye, this one watches you and this one watches you. You feel that you are watched when you are private. Even when you are not private you cannot chose your audience. You feel that everything you do is pornography. Mother cries, father slaps and punches the beliefs explained, and the buildings where it is explained all stink and are filled with slippery objects that you can not touch. You are so nasty you go to the psychologist's office, take your pants down, and look up there with a visionary stethoscope, and give you plastic chewing gum to mutter the pain. The Avon Lady eyeglasses through the windshield, shirt button mouthed, cleavage like a holocaust. Some place you look down sick for your own good. Make-up time in school. Lipstick and fingernail polish on a corpse. Look in the dummy box, there are two wet breasts and an ace of diamonds and a five. The nipple is made of straw like a doll nipple, dry and sweet. Give her your cigarettes, your silver star of David, your ancient ridicule that hackles over the fences that surround and divide history into ghettos and she will fuck you on the newspaper with the cat shit and motoroil, give you an even break where there used to be just shatter lines in your cement. "There is a girl in there," you swear and we swear in memory. Look down where they poured the basement floor, the landlord watching, looking at the electric clock, listening, saying, "Too much talk here," counting and counting to ten, which is all you need to know to count to a million. He watches them and we watch him, "There is a girl down there," we whisper. He glasses in my shirt in a string, beating like a heart against the skin, and she can't see no more. Counts to a million and goes to his cars, writes "One Million" on a piece of paper and drives away with millions on paper. You fucking phony genie, give me my wish! Under the auditorium stairs this time, and no bullshit - show up this time or I'll swipe your glasses and never give 'em back! "She's got something to cry about," they say at the pop stand, "Made her do pornography to pay the rent. She got a skin disease on her pussy, they turned off the heat, and her baby froze on the rug furniture leg, stuck in it like a blue popsicle. And toys all over, sold 'em back to the store for batteries for the radio, to hear where the food bank is." Shannondoa playing like mice through the wall, onion skin propeller twirling in the gray light bulb, and oh it's gonna get dark. Does the sun shit on their roof? I got a hammer lock pencil sharpener you can use in a fight. Got her on the stairs and I'll trade you. Shut the basement floor over her for a million, all the walls are covered with pictures already of her and me and you, fucking each other all day, every day and the cars and the vans going in and out. The cops taking away the night for something it did. Shatter lines across the moon where it used to shine. Heaven up in jail, God splintered by bars, drinking out of the toilet in San Diego, saw him through the little window and he had no more money. Gave him my cigarettes and silver star of David. On a wet afternoon, almost got run over going from the jail to the bail bond and still they wouldn't take nothing I had, my run- over self, five lucky cards, sex, green job - "Never heard of a poor Jew," they said, and threw everything on the floor. "My dad's in there, he's like God to me! My God's in there he's like a dad to me!" "Well, give him all your cigarettes," they said, and he did time and got raped by guards and prisoners, got knifed and kicked the shit out of, went in the hole for five months, three weeks, did not cry for nine years which is almost a million. And next time the land lord smiled was when they took the furnace out and everyone had to get their own heat. You got an eye on your hooligan and I know your breadbox is on fire and the panties was oozing milk but the tracks on your arms talk right into the walkie-talkie. Squad cars fall right out of the sky to see it. Angels of hysteria, tattle-tale virgins with nothing to tell whistle in their once bright air, where now just bricks fly, where once was a bird or two. Oh, Mama, get me a plane ticket out of here! Oh, Mama, put me on a bus! Oh, Mama, get Daddy out of jail! How come the hole in the roof isn't big enough so I can fly out but it's big enough so the rain can get in? And I saw you in the picture and I saw you in the picture and I'm not too young or too dumb to know what you was doing in the picture! I saw you in my clouded heart.

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  4. AlphaMoron, the answers to your questions should be evident if you read the rest of my blog...

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  5. I own one of these things. It's just a cactus. Calm down.

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  6. Wise words – unless it’s me you are asking to chill out ;-)

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  7. By the way, this cactus specimen contains various PEA alkaloids, including the most famous mescaline.

    Biochemboy

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  8. thx to the poster above... wanted to know that it also contains mescaline as other Trichocereus cacti

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  9. more than you might think... ;¬)

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  10. The nature is great when it comes to the creation of organisms. I sometime feel that we are still miles away to still understand the nature.

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  11. Where can you buy it's ...uh... seed? Because I've been looking for this rare monstrose. Cactusplaza doesn't have it AFAIK.

    To the hotheads above: some of us get off more on the fact that it's such a rare variety than on the fact that it's shaped like your attitude is. :p

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  12. I'm not sure if you actually can get seeds of this variety or if it's a clone entirely propagated by cuttings. I bought my plants from Uhlig-Kakteen several years ago, but it seems like they don't have penis cactus plants in stock any longer.

    The Cactus Art Nursery offers "Trichocereus bridgesii forma mostruosa Clone A" for sale (looking exactly as my plants and described as: This is the short joined form of the famous "Penis Cactus" a strong plant that branches at the base and can slowly grow up to 25 (-40) cm tall)

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