Nickolay FEDYUKIN, Moscow region, Russia

Nickolay is 40 on December 13. He is a muscovite, an electrician. Nickolay always loved the nature, flowers and animals. He kept canary birds, pigeons and aquarium fish. His first cactus was Cereus peruvianus which appeared when Nickolay was 16 years old. By the way, this first cactus is still alive and flourishing. The constrained residential conditions at that time did not allowed young cacti-lover to create a good collection. As he says, there were only 52 plants in his collection then. During following years, especially after army service, Nickolay expanded his collection. Those were years of peaks and collapses: Nickolay sowed and purchased, was disappointed, got rid of everything and started again. His hobby became permanent after change of residence and improvement of conditions for cacti cultivation.

Today Nickolay has got about 15 thousands cacti in his collection, of which more than one thousand are blossoming. He annually sows not less than two thousand seeds, not only of his own cacti but also novelties acquired from various firms and cacti-lovers.

Perhaps that might be the end of story about Nickolay, but there is a big BUT! He is passionately keen on "fishing out" seedlings with anomalous development. To prove it I will just list cacti "picked up" and saved by Nickolay during few last years: Mammillaria jonstonii, Pyrrhocactus trausiteusis, Glandulicactus wrightii, Selenicereus pteranthus x Selenicereus macdonaldiae, Coryphantha suleolanata, Ferocactus horridus, Oreocereus neocelsianus, Neoporteria nigrihorrida, Gymnocalycium cardenasianum., Mammillaria bocasana, Gymnocalycium rogonesii, Turbinicarpus loph, Mammillaria wolshlegerii, Gymnocalycium nigriareolatum, Gymnocalycium hybopleurum, Astrophytum myriostigma sk. "Red", Coryphantha vaupeliana, Gymnocalycium spegazzinii, Gymnocalycium moserianum, Gymnocalycium shuetzianum, Gymnocalycium erinaceum, Wilcoxia poselgeri, Neoporteria curvispina v. garaventai, Rebutia senilis, Mammillaria crunigera.

Photos of his plants you will see next time. Today we just would like to congratulate Nickolay on his anniversary, to wish him good health, and to present him (and all of us) a photo of one of his favourites - Mammillaria wolshlegerii.

Nickolay SHEMORAKOV, biologist, Kaluga Region, Russia

Nickolay was born on December 14, 1971 in the family of biologist. His father is a Doctor of biology. His cacti' hobby started when Nickolay was only 12 years old and it is still here. In 1994 Nickolay graduated from Biology and Chemistry Faculty of the Kaluga Pedagogical University. Unfortunately it was not pos-sible to find a job in his professional field so far.

One can say that Nickolay is a real Experimenter, with a capital E. He is interested in everything related to cactuses. And his own words speak best: "If I am lucky, in few years I will get coloured and varie-gated-stemmed forms of cacti not exposed to plastid reparation neither at vegetative nor at generative re-production".

Let's wish Nickolay Shemorakov all the best, good health and success in achievement of his dream.. And we will wait for new letters from him.