Bridgesii

Cactus Kate's Bridgesii

Well documented

Cactus Kate's is a robust, clumping bridgesii with blue-green , five to seven ribs on mature stems and pale needle spines of one to three centimetres. The name traces to Kate, who ran Desert Theatre Nursery in Watsonville, California; her bridgesii only became sought after once Verne Robinson began circulating them after her death. Whether the name covers one or several of her plants lumped together is an open question the community wiki raises itself.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

5-7 ribs
needle spines
glaucous blue-green
dense clumping

BridgesiiNursery selection: A selection a nursery or seed house put a name on and sold.

Of the 11 things this page says, 3 name who reports them and 8 are marked as something we cannot confirm. Where a line is not settled, it says so underneath.

Updated 24 Aug 2026Added 23 Aug 2026

Species

Trichocereus bridgesii

syn. Echinopsis lageniformis

Filed under Bridgesii

Parents

Not recorded

No source names a mother or a father for this one.

Origin

Cactus Kate ran Desert Theatre Nursery in Watsonville, California, at first alongside her husband Jay Jackson.

no source says whether it is seed-grown or a cutting line

In the yard

Not in the yardAsk if you are after one

Family line

what the record holds

No source in this library records a cross for Cactus Kate's Bridgesii. Nobody names a mother or a father for it, and no other entry here names it as a parent.

That is the record, not an oversight: of the 749 names in this library, 693 have no recorded relation either. Most named clones were selected, cut and passed along without anyone writing down what they came out of. A parent goes in here when a source states it and never because a name looks like one — a wrong pedigree would travel further than a blank one, because pedigrees get copied.

If you know where it came from, tell us — a person reads everything before it appears.

The longer version

After the couple separated she kept the Watsonville nursery, while Jackson opened a separate Desert Theater Nursery in Escondido.Reported, but not confirmed.

The Escondido business was later bought by Brandon Bullard and is still trading.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Her bridgesii attracted little attention until after her death, when Verne Robinson got hold of the plants and spread them through the community.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Where the name comes from

Cactus Kate ran Desert Theatre Nursery in Watsonville, California, at first alongside her husband Jay Jackson.Reported, but not confirmed.

Character

A bar is drawn only where one of the lines below states it — never from the species, never from a photograph.

Not documented yet.
Not documented yet.
single column to clumps freely: this one leans strongly towards clumps freely, read from the growth line below.

Skin: Glaucous, from blue-green through to light green.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Blue-green to light green glaucous skin is well within the normal colour range for the genus.
Ribs: Usually five to seven on mature stems, with younger growth sometimes showing four or five.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Spines: Needle-like, roughly one to three centimetres, whitish-grey to light brown against the stem.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Short needle-like spines in those colours are ordinary for Trichocereus.
Growth habit: Robust columns forming dense multi-stemmed patches.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Thick columns clumping from the base into multi-stemmed stands is ordinary growth habit here.

What the sources say

The wiki page states it is unclear whether Cactus Kate's Bridgesii is one clone or several bridgesii she grew, since collected under one brand name. The wiki's Cactus Kate's San Pedro page describes Verne Robinson as the person who traded as Cactus Kate, which contradicts the wiki page's account of two separate people.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

A Bridgesii column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Bridgesii. The better-documented ones come first.

Keep exploring

Cultivar histories in this hobby are passed between growers; where sources disagree we say so rather than pick a side.

Learned from

sanpedrocact.us, the community Trichocereus wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This entry rests on one record. Every fact above traces back to sanpedrocact.us, the community Trichocereus wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0). No second, independent source has confirmed it, so read it as one account rather than as a checked fact. Where we do find a second source we name it here, and the register shows how much of this site rests on each.

Links go to the channel, the subreddit or the front page of a site — never to one video, one post or somebody else’s product page. Nothing above is copied from any of them: every entry is written fresh from a fact list, with the source recorded against each fact as it went in.

Written from scratch off a cited fact list, never copied. Learned from the sanpedrocact.us community wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0), @sanpedromastery6262 and @IMDAVESBUD on YouTube, r/sanpedrocactus and medicactus.com's buyer guides, then checked against university extension horticulture, botanical gardens, cactus and succulent societies and the published botanical record. I will not name a plant from a photograph.

Every source behind this site →

At a glance