SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Barbara Schulze knows a lot about cacti.<\/p>\n
Cacti have been her prickly passion since 1978, and she shares it with others as a member of the San Antonio Cactus and Xerophyte Society (SACXS).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re basically just a group of people that love cactus and succulents.\u201d Schulze said.<\/p>\n
But this group does more than just meet once a month and occasionally show up at garden shows to talk shop and sell products.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe focus on three things: conservation, propagation and education,\u201d said Schulze.<\/p>\n
The education comes in the form of teaching people how growing from seed, though time-consuming, is much better than going out and digging up cacti and keeping them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we call field collecting, and putting them in a different environment, is not extremely successful,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned that it\u2019s better to leave them where they\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sounds fine until you consider the growth that\u2019s happening across the state of Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe constant disruption of natural environments due to building roads, building homes, we\u2019ve decided conservation has to be a big part of what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Schulze said.<\/p>\n
That conservation starts with the black lace cactus. Native to South Texas, the plants are endangered, and the fear is that they could become extinct. So SACXS joined forces with other groups and jumped into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were two collection expeditions. One in January when the Native Plant Society went out and collected over 2,000 of them, and then we went out in February and got the rest of these,\u201d said SACXS member Ron Andring.<\/p>\n
The black lace cactus that were gathered are now at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, having been recovered and re-potted, with the ultimate goal of returning them to the area from which they came.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll be planted back in the ground along with several thousand others that we\u2019re hoping to grow from seed,\u201d Andring said.<\/p>\n
The black lace wasn\u2019t in danger because of new development, but the unearthing of resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe habitat for these is being threatened by mining,\u201d Andring said.<\/p>\n
The permanent survival of this native plant will still take years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to be held here for about a year and then they\u2019ll be transferred down to a facility at the mining site,\u201d said Andring. \u201cThey can acclimate there for several years while they finish the mining and then do the reclamation of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
The black lace cactus seems to have averted disaster, but this is just the beginning as other cacti and plants find themselves in a similar predicament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect this is going to go on for a very long time.\u201d Andring said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a process that\u2019ll take patience, being carried out by patient people who want you to know that cacti have a greater purpose than just taking up space on the windowsill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cactus are there for food, for shelter, their roots help hold the soil in place. They\u2019re part of the environment,\u201d Schulze said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Barbara Schulze knows a lot about cacti. Cacti have been her prickly passion since 1978,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[96669,132,134,133,12710,1570,102,138,2327,223,82,27,26986,1569,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-256846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-app-environment","9":"tag-austin","10":"tag-austin-headlines","11":"tag-austin-news","12":"tag-bryan-boes","13":"tag-ctv","14":"tag-dallas","15":"tag-el-paso","16":"tag-environment","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-san-antonio","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-texas-editors-picks","21":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}