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pencil cactus sap Buy 'Pencil Cactus - Euphorbia tirucalli Firesticks' Care and Growing GuideIntroducing the Pencil Cactus, botanically known as Euphorbia tirucalli Fire Sticks (also called Sticks on Fire), a striking succulent prized for its sea coral like appearance and vibrant, loosely branching pencil thin stems that develop brilliant shades of green, orange, and red. Native to Southern Africa, this unique succulent belongs to the Euphorbiaceae (spurge) family, not the cactus family (Cactaceae), though it is commonly referred to as Pencil

Introducing the Pencil Cactus, botanically known as Euphorbia tirucalli ‘Fire Sticks’ (also called Sticks on Fire), a striking succulent prized for its sea coral-like appearance and vibrant, loosely branching pencil-thin stems that develop brilliant shades of green, orange, and red.

Native to Southern Africa, this unique succulent belongs to the Euphorbiaceae (spurge) family, not the cactus family (Cactaceae), though it is commonly referred to as “Pencil Cactus” because of its cactus-like form and upright growth habit. It is also known by several other common names, including fire sticks plant, sticks on fire succulent, fire plant, red pencil tree, milk bush, and Euphorbia tirucalli ‘Rosea’.


When exposed to direct sunlight, the tips turn red, which is why they are also called firesticks.

This fast growing evergreen succulent can grow up to 30 feet tall and 10 feet wide, forming a thicket of brilliantly colored vertical stems with loose branches.

The unusual stems of this firestick plant, which are as thin as pencils, have a reddish-golden hue that becomes yellow in the summer and red again in the winter.

The pencil cactus flowers boast vibrant yellow, pink, or orange blooms in the summer and spring, making them a true showstopper in any garden.

The pencil cactus is extremely drought tolerant and hard to kill, and as a result, is a great, low-maintenance, easy-care plant for your home or garden.

You can grow your pencil cactus indoors year-round as a houseplant. If planting outdoors, it's best to do so in the spring when temperatures are warm and stable. This cactus grows faster than many other cacti, making it a striking addition to your garden or home.

If you cut your pencil cactus, be careful—the thick, white sap is toxic and can cause skin irritation, burns, or severe eye irritation if it gets into your eyes. While highly irritating, some cultures have historically used it in traditional medicine for treating growths like warts and tumors, though it is not safe for home remedies. Always wear gloves when handling the plant and wash your hands thoroughly if you come into contact with the sap.

When and How to Water Your Pencil Cactus 

This pencil cactus firestick plant can withstand droughts and doesn't need to be watered frequently to survive. Watering these perennial succulents should be done every 3–4 weeks or when the soil feels dry. Let the soil completely dry out between waterings, and if in doubt, give your fire plant a little more time before watering again.  Less water is needed for humid locations and indoor spaces. Pay attention to how the pencil cactus looks and adjust the watering accordingly.

Remember that succulents in the desert can go for weeks or even months without water, so water them sparingly during their rest phase and moderately during their active growing season.

Pro Tip

Most people like to see the red tips that give this Euphorbia tirucalli its firestick name. Note that it is stress that causes the tips to go red. So, the art is to stress the firestick plant a bit, but not too much. So, give it a lot of light and water it less than other succulents, so it is thirsty but not dying of thirst.

Overwatering can also cause the Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks' tips to turn red, but it can also lead to root rot and other problems. So, if your pencil cactus is not turning red in full sun, it's possible that it's not experiencing enough stress to produce the anthocyanin pigments or that it's receiving too much water.

Light Requirements - Where to Place Your Pencil Cactus 

Like most succulents, indoors, the Euphorbia tirucalli firesticks need bright, indirect sunlight to thrive, so choose the brightest area in the house.

Potted indoor pencil cacti require four hours of direct sunlight, which can be achieved by locating them on a sunny south or west-facing windowsill. 

If you are growing these firestick succulents outdoors, make sure that they receive at least six hours of direct sunlight per day.

Partial shade may be tolerated as long as your pencil cactus gets the majority of the sunlight that it needs when it's planted outside. This succulent plant won't thrive if left in the shade for a long time. Its colors become more vibrant the more sunlight it receives.

In order to avoid sunburn, it is preferable to acclimatize your pencil cactus first before moving it outdoors or increasing the amount of sunlight it receives.

Optimal Soil & Fertilizer Needs 

The firestick Euphorbia is a succulent plant that likes very airy, porous, nutrient-rich soil with a pH of 5.5–6.5. Succulents require fast-draining soil that dries completely between waterings. Ideally, you want to use our specialized potting mixGo to soil cactus mix blend 1 gal 4 qt cacti succulent dirt compost growing media that contains 5 natural substrates and organic mycorrhizae to promote the development of a strong root system that helps your Euphorbia firesticks Pencil Cactus to thrive. 

When it comes to fertilizing your pencil cactus plant, it only needs a small amount of fertilizer applied once a year in spring. Cacti prefer a fertilizer with lower doses of NPK, with a maximum ratio of 5-10-5 that is higher in phosphorus than nitrogen.

Hardiness Zones & More 

When growing indoors as a houseplant, the Euphorbia firestick can tolerate temperatures between 65 °F and 75 °F. Your Euphorbia firestick plant performs well in temperatures above 30 °F. However, it can withstand temperatures below that, but only for short periods of time.

In the United States, the Euphorbia tirucalli is mostly an indoor plant, but if you live in southern Florida or Hawaii then you can cultivate it outdoors in USDA zones 10 -11.

Growing these pencil cacti in containers is the best option if you live in an area with harsh winters.

By doing this, you can bring your Pencil Cactus indoors during the winter or any time there's a chance of frost or snow. Normal house humidity is fine for this Euphorbia, but it prefers dry conditions. 

Wildlife - Euphorbia tirucalli Attracts the Following Friendly Pollinators

The Euphorbia tirucalli flowers attract a variety of pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, with their bright colors and sweet nectar. These pollinators play a crucial role in the ecosystem by helping to fertilize plants and promote biodiversity.

Butterflies
Bees
Hummingbirds
Lady Bugs
Multi Pollinators
Other Birds

According to ASPCA, the Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks' is mildly toxic to humans and pets. It can irritate the skin, eyes, and gastrointestinal tract. However, it is safe to touch as long as precautions are taken to avoid contact with the sap. Wear gloves when handling this plant to prevent any potential skin irritation.

How to Propagate Your Pencil Cactus

When it comes to pencil cactus propagation, one common method is through stem cuttings. Simply take a cutting from a healthy pencil cactus, let it dry for a few days, and then place it in well-draining soil. Another method is through division, where you carefully separate the offsets or side shoots from the main plant and plant them individually.

Key Takeaways

  1. The stems of firesticks are as thin as pencils (hence the name) and turn a fire-red in the winter.
  2. Euphorbia Firesticks is a stunning variety that changes color with the seasons, turning bright red or orange tips in cooler temperatures or full sun.
  3. This succulent has a rapid growth rate, reaching up to 30 feet tall when grown outdoors, with a branching, upright form.
  4. During the spring and summer, the yellow flowers bloom in clusters on the end of the branch, usually for just a few days.

The Bottom Line

Overall, the pencil cactus (Euphorbia Firesticks) is a unique and striking succulent plant that adds a touch of elegance to any space. With its slender, pencil-like stems and vibrant green color, this sticks-on-fire cactus can truly be a showstopper. However, it's important to remember that the pencil cactus is not a true cactus but rather a succulent. It requires minimal care, preferring bright light and well-draining soil. By providing proper pencil cactus care, you'll have a beautiful and unique Euphorbia firestick plant that will thrive for years to come. 

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Etienne RP
Port Orchard, US
★★★★★ 5
Hosting Diplomatic Conferences 101: The Case of Bretton Woods
Format: Paperback
Bretton Woods was the most important international gathering since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. I read this book looking for clues on how to host international conferences: how to accommodate delegates, maintain protocol, overcome obstacles, build consensus, and reach a satisfying outcome. I was disappointed on that count. The Battle of Bretton Woods doesn’t focus on the Bretton Woods conference per se. It is a work of intellectual history built around the two characters of John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. It describes the way these two Treasury officials negotiated the main financial issues facing the United States and the United Kingdom during World War II and immediately after: the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 granting the British access to war finance and equipment; the blueprints for a postwar monetary order that began circulating in 1942 and ultimately culminated in the adoption of the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development at Bretton Woods; the signing of the $4.4 billion Anglo-American Financial Agreement in December 1945; and the inaugural meeting of the IMF board of governors in Savannah, Georgia, on March 8, 1946. It mixes these elements of diplomatic history with personal aspects of the lives of the two main characters: Keynes’s inflated ego and lack of diplomatic acumen that resulted in missed opportunities for Great Britain; and White’s dual personality as the braintrust of the US Treasury and as a mole operating clandestinely for the Soviets. To be sure, there are some useful indications on the Bretton Woods conference itself. It took place in the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, a luxury resort with striking views of the White Mountains. The organization itself was a mess: “everything is in a state of glorious confusion,” commented British economist Lionel Robbins, who added: “with all their virtues as technicians—and these are very great—the Americans are not good organizers of international conferences.” The conference took place in war time, and army bus and personnel brought the delegates in and out. Delegates were thrown out of the hotel on July 23 for fear they would reopen the discussion and have a closer look at the hastily agreed texts. The location itself owed a lot to domestic politics. US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wanted to court a local politician for future support of the agreement in the Senate, remembering the disastrous defeat of Wilson’s League of Nations in Congress after World War I. The press was also in attendance, and Bretton Woods became one of the first international conferences to be covered live by the media. Most of the delegates came from Ministries of Finance or central banks, and true diplomats—the ones hailing from Ministries of Foreign Affairs—were a rare occurrence. The US Treasury Department had willingly kept the State Department out of the loop, and considered the only senior diplomat present, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, as “one of them”. The conference was only the tip of the iceberg: everything was set in advance, during the two years when plans were circulated and drafts were discussed. The invitations were sent to forty-four nations, but the United States ran the show from start to finish, and even British delegates were relegated to a secondary role. Keynes, who had termed the Reconstruction Bank scheme imagined by White “the work of a lunatic,…some sort of bad joke,” was named chairman of the commission that drafted the Bank’s Articles of Agreement, while White himself dealt with the much more significant IMF. As for other nations, their input was limited to discussing the national quotas that would measure their relative power and influence at the boards of the two institutions or, in the case of the Cubans, to “providing the cigars”. White’s goal was to “channel the energy, aims, ambitions, and vanities of the mass of delegates into meaningless debate.” As an American organizer wily remarked, “there should be just one general rule: that anybody can talk as long as he pleases, provided he doesn’t say anything.” To make things even safer, the session secretaries were all Americans, appointed by White, and it was they who wrote the official minutes of the committees. Some important remarks made during sessions disappeared from the draft minutes, while crucial provisions were introduced surreptitiously in the final text versions. As an example, White’s technicians strategically replaced “gold” with “gold and dollars” in the paper describing the foundations of the postwar monetary order, a crucial modification that Keynes discovered only after his departure from Bretton Woods. The result was, in Keynes’s words, “the most monstrous monkey-house assembled for years.” The distinguished Cambridge don liked that expression, and indeed often referred to non-Anglo-saxons as monkeys, with a special mention to the French which he utterly despised. But the monkey-king in this diplomatic jungle was certainly Keynes himself. Long before Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty, Keynes was the first-ever international celebrity economist. He was surrounded by an aura of awe and admiration, and the printed media craved for his every declarations. In Benn Steil’s rendering, he had “an effortless facility with words that might have made him a master diplomat, had he actually been more concerned with convincing opponents than with cornering them logically and humiliating them.” “The man is a menace for international relations,” remarked fellow British economist James Meade, who nonetheless revered him. He would make aggressive jokes on lawyers in front of American lawyers, show his contempt for other delegates by displaying his immense intellectual superiority, and try to steal the show by pretending the outcomes of negotiations were all due to his influence while in fact they ran counter to his prescriptions. His last speech in Savannah, where he metaphorically summoned spirits and fairies to bestow the newborn institutions with their gifts, was taken as a personal attack by the American delegate: “I do mind being called a fairy,” he muttered to his aide. If a statesman is to be judged by his capacity to serve the national interest, Keynes failed miserably in his attempt at statesmanship. This is not to say that he didn’t have Britain’s interest in mind. His visionary monetary schemes notwithstanding, he had ultimately come to the United States with the mission of conserving what he could of bankrupt Britain’s historic imperial prerogatives. As Schumpeter wrote, “Keynes’s advice was in the first instance always English advice, born of English problems.” Keynes was thoroughly British, and it was the British problems of his day that drove his theorizing: problems of deflation and depression, paying for war and surviving the perilous transition to peace. He had spent his career thinking about monetary issues as a way to preserve his country’s clout in the world. In particular, the shift of financial power from London to New York was a matter of constant concern for him. But he lacked the basic insight that the Americans did not share British national interests, and that they could even be rival powers on the international scene. Throughout the war, Keynes continuously overestimated American sympathies with Britain and underestimated the importance of public and congressional resistance to US aid or involvement. He thought of Bretton Woods as a battle of ideas, counting on his immense intellectual superiority to carry the day, whereas it was first and foremost a battle of power and influence, with the United States as the clear winner. Indeed, British and American interests were not identical, however much both peoples were dedicated to destroying Nazism. Henry White had a clear goal in Bretton Woods: to entrench the dollar as the world’s currency, and to make it “as good as gold”. He used the leverage provided by the Lend-Lease agreement and Britain’s quasi-bankrupt situation in order to put a permanent end to the pound sterling’s international role. This required dismantling the structural supports of the British empire. In particular, Americans sought to put an end to “imperial preference”, by which Britain secured privileged trade access to the markets of its colonies and dominions. There was no room in the new order for the remnants of British imperial glory: the postwar world needed to be grounded in nondiscriminatory multilateral trade and full monetary convertibility. The Americans never deviated from their hard-line geopolitical terms. Many held no particular sympathy for the British, who had “shamefully walked away from their Great War debt obligations,” and who were trying to extend their Empire’s lease of life by credit. At Bretton Woods, we see American power in full swing, and in particular the role of the US Treasury as the economic arm of American foreign policy. Contrary to the myth, Bretton Woods did not provide the economic foundation for postwar prosperity and monetary stability. And it was not the cooperative, disinterested, forward-looking endeavor that people often have in mind when they stress the need for a new Bretton Woods. The Bretton Woods system didn’t work the way it was supposed to. It was effective for only a brief period, and then not for the reason its authors had envisaged. It was not until 1961, fifteen years after the IMF was inaugurated, that the first nine European countries formally adopted the required provisions that their currencies be convertible into dollars. Even then, Bretton Woods was an ineffective and crisis-prone monetary system. It began experiencing potentially fatal difficulties as early as the late 1950s, and was only kept alive by a series of political fixes that made little long-term, macroeconomic sense. It could never have survived the globalization of finance and the removal of capital controls that began to take place in the 1970s. Indeed, it can be argued that the system was doomed the moment that it came into existence, and that the Bretton Woods agreements contained fatal flaws that could only lead to the abandon of gold convertibility. Not only was Bretton Woods a crisis-prone, unstable system: it was also a bad deal for Great Britain and, one could argue, for the United States and for the world as well. What Britain actually needed in 1944-45 was short-term financing at reasonable cost with few geopolitical strings attached, and possibly a lower exchange rate. There was evident hubris in the attempt to design a global monetary system, to be managed by an international body, at a time when the outcome of the war was not yet clear. Keynes and White’s ambition was to create “a New Deal for a new world,” but they lacked the political legitimacy and also the effective means to achieve such a grand plan. Another course of action was possible for the United Kingdom, one suggested by a British Treasury official after the facts: postpone the “Grand Design” negotiations, avoid irreversible decisions, try to buy time until you see how the new postwar world develops, and borrow your way out of the crisis by getting a commercial loan from Wall Street. Who at Bretton Woods would have thought that the British empire would unravel, the United States and the Soviet Union turn into arch-enemies, and the world divide into hostile camps just two years after the conference? There was no necessity to conclude Bretton Woods in a haste. Waiting for the San Francisco conference to address the issue of money and finance jointly with the creation of the United Nations would have made the postwar institutional framework more coherent. The world would have avoided the dichotomy between the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington and the United Nations in New York, in which both seem to live on completely different planes. So are there practical lessons from Bretton Woods for statesmen and diplomats hosting international meetings, such as the Paris Conference on Climate Change that will take place in end-November and December 2015? First, as the previous attempt to tackle climate change at Copenhagen taught us, the summit itself is not the place where comprehensive negotiations should take place. Most items on the agenda should be solved beforehand, in preparatory meetings among experts or in a pre-summit rehearsal such as the UN General Assembly in New York. Second, organizers should make sure they keep a bone for the leaders and national delegates to chew, one that is easy enough to grasp and with a clear payoff in terms of national interest, such as the quota issue at Bretton Woods. Managing expectations and egos will always be a tricky issue, but one that diplomats are best equipped to handle. How to deal with the media is also a key issue, particularly in our age of instant communication and world broadcasting. Lastly, a modicum of modesty should be in order: the world is not going to be saved by international conferences, however successful they turn out to be. For Britain in 1944 and for the planet as a whole in 2015, buying time is always a sensible option.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2015
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active reader
Draper, US
★★★★★ 3
History worth reading
Format: Kindle
Presents the history of the Bretton Woods conference, creation of the World Bank and the IMF and global and US politics surrounding the events. Discussion of Harry Dexter White, key US representative at Bretton Woods focuses on claims he was a Soviet spy beginning in the late 1930s and continuing through the conference and into the late 1940s; spends more time than necessary on this even though it is not clear how this affected the outcome of the conference. Most of the discussion of Keynes is on his reputation rather than his economics. Not the definitive history of Bretton Woods.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2013
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John Hemphill
Omaha, US
★★★★★ 4
Foes at the Top Table
Format: Kindle
Those of us who studied economics in the 60s grew up on Keynes. This book provides a fascinating picture of the great man in action. And an equally fascinating picture of the Lend Lease negotiations and then the US hard line at Bretton Woods. Behind this hard line was Harry Woods, of Lithuanian emigre stock, who clawed his way by hard work and intelligence to negotiating prominence in the US Treasury. And who was a Soviet agent of influence. Well written, lucid, and remarkably interesting.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2013
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Manuel Hinds
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 5
A distant mirror of our current problems
Format: Hardcover
The title of this excellent book accurately describes its contents:it is about a battle fought to define a new world order, that which was emerging from the ashes of World War II. The book also conveys the messy complexity of such a historical process--how individual characters interpreted the events around them, realized that they were giving shape to a radically new future, tried to take advantage of them to advance their own personal and national interests, and succeeded in accordance with their intelligence, the cunning of their argumentation, and, above all, the shifts in the real power that supported them. Masterly, Benn Steil makes the reader feel how Keynes and White gradually reached an unspoken and unrecognized agreement regarding the shape that the new world would have, and then fought to gain advantage in that new world--Keynes trying to keep the British Empire paramount in the world order, now based not on the Royal Navy but on Britain's alliance with the United States, the emerging superpower, and White asserting the unimpeded power of the United States. Focusing on one crucial aspect of the new order, money, Steil is able to reenact the human drama of the transfer of world power from Britain to the United States in all orders of life. It is an excellent history book. The book, however, goes beyond history as the narration and understanding of past events. When reading it, there is an eerie feeling that you are reading about current events. The process that led to Bretton Woods started thirty years before, with World War I and the end of the classical gold standard. When the war ended, a new monetary system was created, which was called the gold exchange standard. It resembled but emasculated the power of the old gold standard to keep monetary order in the world at large. This new system gave central banks the power to create money independently of the international consequences of doing it. With time, central banks abused this power, created a boom in the 1920s and then a depression in the 1930s. Bretton Woods was convened to reintroduce order in the monetary world. Like the gold standard of old, the new system created there was tied to gold in an effort to ensure stability. Yet, it also allowed central banks freedom to create money under certain circumstances. As it happened in the 1920s and 1930s, central banks abused their power, blew up the international system (in this case the Bretton Woods system) and then led the world into a series of booms and busts that has not ended as yet. A new monetary order will be needed to avoid worldwide inflation and protracted recessions. To understand the issues that will be crucial to give shape to this new monetary order it will be necessary to revisit the making of Bretton Woods in detail. There is no better way to understand these issues that Ben Steil's The Battle of Bretton Woods. Thus, in addition to being an excellent history book, it is also an excellent book about current events. Full disclosure: I wrote a previous book with Benn Steil: Money, Markets and Sovereignty (Yale University Press, 2009).
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Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2013
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Verified Purchase
djwatkins487
Carnegie, US
★★★★★ 5
The Battle of Bretton Woods
Format: Hardcover
From the growing reliance upon international finance and the devastating repercussions of two World Wars, Steil weaves together an important narrative that tells the story of America's rise to the world stage as a major power. Britain's reign of dominance comes to an abrupt end under the weight of the Second World War and the dependence of their territories. Reliance on foreign aid and mounting debt put Britain in a precarious situation for which the United States capitalized on to secure its place as the dominant world power. Through the ideas and experiences of two brilliant economists, Harry White and John Keynes, were guided through the creation and implementation of an economic solution to remedy, and further amalgamate the global financial framework. At Bretton Woods, White and Keynes promote slightly different plans that form the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; organizations designed to monitor, stabilize, and assist international finance. To Britain, and much of the world's chagrin, the organizations are formed in a manner that benefited the United States post-World War Two position as a creditor nation. Dollar dominance in the newly designed financial markets promotes short-term growth for the United States. However, financial mismanagement and over-extension soon lead the U.S. down a path of monetary hardship that ultimately results in our current situation as debtor nations (much like Britain was when the story began). The author ends the narrative by chronicling the effects of Bretton Woods on the United States, Britain, and international finance from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This book tells the remarkable story of America's rise to power through a financial lens. Steil is a wonderful writer who describes complex ideas of monetary policy, international economics, and currency manipulation in such a manner that is easy to understand and leaves the reader wanting more.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2013

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