Cacti aficionado, with over 4,000 cacti in 1,800 species, to open botanical garden in Mures

A passionate grower of cacti of Mures County, Cristian Sergiu Gavriloaie, who owns, in Ideciu de Jos, a greenhouse with over 4,000 cacti from 1,800 different species, intends, at some point, to open a botanical garden that could be freely visited and where correctly acclimatized cacti could be acquired. "In 2002 the first acquisitions took place, from the classical commerce, I didn't know how to care for them properly, then I read an encyclopedia about them and realized how many mistakes I made. So I started adopting as many plants as possible, caring for them successfully and they repay me with their beauty. (...) After we finish what we have to do around the house, this will be a mini botanical garden, which will be freely accessible, where passionate people can find plants to buy, acclimatize and grow correctly. We won't stop here, maybe we will invest also in an online store," said, for AGERPRES, Cristian Sergiu Gavriloaie, an engineer specializing in equipment for high-altitude work. The cacti collector claims that he managed to earn about acclimatizing and correctly raising cacti from specialty treatises, because on the Internet the information is confusing, thus he discovered the frequent mistakes made by those that own these kinds of plants. "It's important to know how to care for them correctly, what their name is, where they come from, what needs they have, thus you can't ensure a healthy life cycle. They live in captivity, they don't have a hectare of land as in nature and then it's important to acclimatize them and bring them to maturity, to blossoming, so they complete their life cycle. Cacti have a season in which they vegetate, they accumulate resources and grow and a season in which they are in vegetative break, for about six months, which coincides with the dry season in the areas that they live in. Any plant that reaches maturity, if it's not missing anything, it will blossom each year. If it doesn't blossom, it either has a too small vase, or is lacking in minerals, or missing who knows what, but they should blossom annually. It's only a myth that these cacti would blossom only once every 4 years or 7 years. Once you learned to grow them correctly and they reach maturity, they should blossom each season," the collector claimed. He says he recently participated in a producer fair, which was not a commercial success, but that many people asked him questions and people managed to understand why their cacti don't blossom. In the twenty years of activity in growing cacti, Cristian Sergiu Gavriloaie showed that he has common species for the most part, but that in past years he resonated more with certain species in the Cactaceae family and collected more plants of his preference, such as Echinopsis, Rebutia, Astrophytum.AGERPRES(RO - author: Dorina Matis, editor: Karina Olteanu; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Maria Voican)