Phyllis Grant Flechsig

June 26, 1931 – June 21, 2026

Encinitas, CA

Phyllis Flechsig, cactus and succulent grower, known for hand-pollinating and growing rare plants from seed, including the well-known epiphyllum ‘Clown’, died at age 94. The cause was heart failure.

She ran a small cactus nursery specializing in plants for collectors looking for the unusual: “If you can get it at Home Depot, I’m not going to grow it.”

Phyllis was active in several local plant clubs, such as the Palomar Cactus & Succulent Society and San Diego Cactus & Succulent Society, both of which named her an honorary life member.

She was an early docent at Quail (now San Diego) Botanic Garden in Encinitas, where as a young mother she accompanied the founders on trips to acquire large cacti and succulents for the park. She was named their Volunteer of 2012.

Phyllis Bettina Grant was born in Berkeley, CA, to Marian Wildman Grant and Phil Stringham Grant, the supervisor of Subject A English at UC Berkeley. Phyllis was a published author at 10 years old, contributing stories to a children’s column in the Berkeley Daily Gazette.

The family, including older sister Jean, moved to the small town of Alamo, CA, where as a “lazy” teen, Phyllis spent hours watching turtles in a creek that ran through their property. Her love of the wilderness was nurtured as a Camp Fire Girl at Camp Celio on Lake Vera near Nevada City.

A 1949 graduate of San Ramon Valley High School, she played bassoon in her high school marching band and later, violin in her college orchestra.

After graduating from Pomona College in 1953, Phyllis met and married Art Flechsig, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. By 1960 they had three children and needed more room, so they bought a small house on a large lot in Encinitas. After awhile, they had a fourth child, a daughter, to go with the two sons and one daughter they already had.

Phyllis combined motherhood with creative crafts, especially knitting in continental style -- learned from a German neighbor -- plus crewel embroidery; Rya rugs; weaving; sewing clothes for herself, her daughters, and their dolls; and cooking. She and Art organized many family camping and backpacking trips in the 1960s through ‘80s.

Like both her parents, Phyllis had always been an ardent gardener, and in the late 1970s she opened a mail-order business in cacti and succulents which she grew herself. She retired from a series of jobs in technical editing to give full time to her expanding business.

After ten years, wanting to travel more with her husband, Art, she quit the mail-order portion of the business and continued to sell plants through the various cactus and succulent societies she belonged to. Because she loved to grow from seed, she amassed a huge collection with two greenhouses and a shade house, built by her husband.

She and Art made a lot of trips to the Caribbean, where they especially enjoyed snorkeling over coral reefs, and they camped all over Baja California.

After her husband of nearly 50 years died in May 2003, Phyllis started traveling again, visiting England, the Galapagos, Antarctica, South Africa, and many more countries.

A lifelong subscriber to The New Yorker magazine, Phyllis was a crossword puzzler and enjoyed reading detective fiction.

Phyllis was cared for at home in her latter years by her elder daughter, Katrin. She also leaves behind her sons Karl (Lu Ann), Los Gatos; Gregor, San Marcos; and daughter Natasha (Kevin Lohman), Santa Cruz; and five grandchildren. Her younger sister, Kathy Truesdell (Bill), Twentynine Palms, also survives her.

A family memorial is pending.