Phyllis Grant Flechsig
OBITUARY
Phyllis Flechsig, cactus and succulent grower, known for hand-pollinating and growing rare plants from seed, including the well-known epiphyllum ‘Clown’, died at age 94. Phyllis was active in local plant clubs, such as the Palomar Cactus & Succulent Society and San Diego Cactus & Succulent Society, both of which named her an honorary life member. She was an early docent at Quail (now San Diego) Botanic Garden in Encinitas, where as a young mother she accompanied the founders on trips to acquire large cacti and succulents for the park. She was named their Volunteer of 2012.
Phyllis Bettina Grant was born in Berkeley, CA, to Marian Wildman Grant and Phil Stringham Grant, the supervisor of Subject A English at UC Berkeley. Phyllis was a published author at 10 years old, contributing stories to a children’s column in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. The family, including older sister Jean, moved to the small town of Alamo, CA, where as a “lazy” teen, Phyllis spent many happy hours watching turtles in a creek that ran through their property. Her love of the wilderness was nurtured as a Camp Fire Girl at Camp Celio on Lake Vera near Nevada City.
After graduating from Pomona College in 1953, Phyllis met and married Art Flechsig, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. With a growing family, they moved to a small house on a large lot in Encinitas. She and Art organized many family camping and backpacking trips in the 1960s through ’80s.
Like both her parents, Phyllis was an ardent gardener, and in the late 1970s she opened a mail-order business in cacti and succulents which she grew herself. She retired from a series of jobs in technical editing to give full time to her expanding business. After ten years, wanting to travel more with her husband, Art, she quit the mail-order portion of the business and continued to sell plants through the various clubs she belonged to. Because she loved to grow from seed, she amassed a huge collection with two greenhouses and a shade house, built by her husband.
She and Art made a lot of trips to the Caribbean, where they especially enjoyed snorkeling over coral reefs, and they camped all over Baja. After her husband of nearly 50 years died in May 2003, Phyllis started traveling again, visiting England, Antarctica, South Africa, and many more countries. A lifelong subscriber to The New Yorker magazine, Phyllis was a crossword puzzler and enjoyed reading detective fiction.
Phyllis was cared for at home in her latter years by her elder daughter, Katrin. She also leaves behind her sons Karl (Lu Ann), Los Gatos; Gregor, San Marcos; and daughter Natasha (Kevin Lohman), Santa Cruz; and five grandchildren. Her younger sister, Kathy Truesdell (Bill), Twentynine Palms, also survives her.
A family memorial is pending.