[Janet Ibbotson]

I saw this growing as a tree in a garden in Nafplion and would dearly like to get one but cannot find a nursery supplying it in the UK.  One nursery shows a photograph of an entirely different plant and the one in the RHS plantfinder doesn't have it on their plant list.  Does anyone know a British or possibly a Greek source?

[Fleur Pavlidis]

Janet, is this the plant we're talking about? www.tropicopia.com/tropicopia/house-plant/detail.np/detail-81.html 
I believe an enormous cactus in a garden in Markopoulo may be the same plant. If so, I used to have one, but I didn't love it and it eventually died. In those days I was gardening under pines and the pain of cleaning pine needles from cactuses is still clear in my mind. I've a vague recollection that it came from Sparoza in the 70s so it would be nice to find it again and grow it in my almost pine-free garden. I rang up Mr Poulimenos, who has a huge cactus nursery in Kapandriti and he has Cereus peruvianus monstrosus up to one metre. He's a real expert so I'm pretty sure he has the right plant. I didn't get prices.
Tel 22950 52200

[Alisdair]

Fleur, Do you know if Mr Poulimenos sends cactuses and succulents by post to other EC countries? I see he has a website here.
Perhaps we ought to add him to the suppliers list.

[Janet Ibbotson]

Fleur, that's very helpful information thank you and yes, that's the plant.  I wish I'd photographed it, it was splendid.  I'm planning to be back in Greece in the second half of March and will follow up then.  I will keep it far away from the pines.  Alasdair, don't order all his plants before I get one!

[Ina]

I used to have one of those in a balcony in Athens. It was huge and as I was studying there I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. It needs very little water. The one problem I had is that at some point it became to heavy and it started breaking so I had to prune it... Also I remember that the woman living right above asked me if I could give her a piece so she could plant it and as she didn't aske me for a new one I guess she was succesful. So maybe you could take a piece from someone and plant it. It is common in Greece to do so, so noone will find it strange.