Six LA-based cactus enthusiasts (and friends) recently came together to open Cactus Store, a collector’s mecca offering some of the rarest cacti known to mankind. Located in the LA neighborhood of Echo Park, Cactus Store is not your typical nursery.
Photography by Cactus Store.
It took two weeks and several trips down to the border of Mexico to hand-pick cacti from various farms, before the store came alive one year ago.
“We believe that they are potentially the most interesting and intelligent plants in the world,” says Morera. After walking around the property with my gloves in my mouth (to keep from screaming of excitement), we bought the whole thing.
“This ancient Boxing Glove Cholla cactus was found outside of Yucca Valley, CA at an old grower’s property,” says Morera.
We re a collector s store Each plant has been selected by us for its unique form and or rarity Depending on how difficult it was to obtain or how rarely we have seen it in cultivation has a correlating worth There are some plants that are the size of a...
...marshmallow and cost as much as an 8 foot plant but that marshmallow sized plant is 80 years old only grows in San Dunes in Peru in a one square kilometer on a chicken farm that no one has access to Owning one of these plants is owning a story says Morera
A Euphorbia caput-medusae succulent is a snaky ground crawler.
Carlos’s father, Tony Morera, is an LA-based architect and designed one of the store’s greenhouses.
This has become our growing house, where we keep stock until the plant matures to a size and quality we are interested in,” says Morera.
Uncle Johnny working on the sketch for a mini botanical garden for the Cactus Store called Huntington Gardens II.
The Cactus Store’s pots are sourced from a Mexican manufacturer and arrive in raw form, without glaze or paint. Johnny Morera and his nephew, Carlos Morera, outside the Cactus Store.