Naomi Bloss can thank her husband’s brown thumb for encouraging her interest in cacti.

Years ago, when the couple lived in Washington, D.C., it was so hot in the summertime that the neighborhood wives would take the kids to a farm in Pennsylvania and leave the men in charge at home. She remembers, “We’d come back and all the houseplants would be dead — except my cactus and succulents.”

Her respect for the hardy plants grew when she was invited to join a cactus society. “I discovered a world of people interested in these odd little plants,” she marvels, “and I got hooked.” Bloss became one of the first Master Gardeners in Washington, D.C., and now serves as president of the 140-member Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, which meets once a month at the Watsonville VFW.

She’s also the proud and not-at-all-prickly owner of about 10,000 cactus and succulent plants at her home near Corralitos. “When we moved here in 1989, I thought it would be the perfect place to grow cactus,” she says. “But record rains that year taught me a hard lesson, and damage from the big earthquake in October took a while to recover from as well.”

In sentences peppered with both common and Latin names, Naomi sings the praises of her beloved plants. “There’s the African Madagascar Caudisiform: they have a great big water storage facility in their stem,” she says. “And the Sempervivums — most people know them as ‘hen and chicks’ or ‘live forever’ — those spread by rosettes and grow just about everywhere.” She says it’s traditional to plant these succulents on sod roofs in Europe, adding, “My son in Germany has some, and so does my nephew in Austria.”

Bloss has traveled long distances to observe cactus and succulents firsthand, taking trips to Namibia and South Africa, Argentina, Mexico and Baja. “I saw cactus in Patagonia last December,” she says, noting that although succulents grow on all continents, cactus is a New World plant — Patagonia is the southernmost point where native cacti can be found.

And in answer to the question that she says everyone asks, she affirms, “Yes, cacti all bloom. Some flowers smell quite sweet, some don’t smell at all; one has a scent just like peppermint. And some smell like — well, like something rotting.” She notes that although some plants flower their first season, others take up to 30 years to blossom.

Until fairly recently, Bloss still had one of her original cactus plants, which she estimated at about 70 years old. “I lost it to root mealy bugs,” she says regretfully. “Cacti aren’t very susceptible to disease and pests, but some things can get them.”

Has her husband developed a love of cacti as well? “He had to absorb it, like osmosis,” she says. “But he’s interested more along the lines of photographing them.”