Too Soon to Bloom

"Dear Christmas Cacti, ProfessorRoush is not in the habit of complaining about flowers, but you have jumped the gun, premature in your pretentiousness, too fast in your florescence.  I understand that Walmart may have out their Christmas merchandise in full display, but it is not even Hallow's Eve and yet here you are."   Of course, I should remember that these epiphytic and lithophytic plants are native to Brazil, at coastal half-mile altitudes, where they are known as Flor de Maio (May flower), and their flowering is triggered by the onset of cooler air and dwindling sunlight.  

Imagine my surprise yesterday to see that most of our Christmas cactuses (cacti seems so abrupt as a plural) were blooming, some in full display, others just starting, and half still dormant, but all contributing to a sudden explosion of color in the sunroom.  I hadn't been watching closely and they snuck the buds in without my noticing.  Schlumbergera in the sunroom seems like poor environmental placement, but these are behind opaque blinds that shield them from the summer Kansas sun.  

I neglect these for the most part, watering every other week or every week as I remember them, turning the pots occasionally so they grow symmetrically.   They are one of those plants that respond, evidently, to inattention, because most of these specimens are pot-bound and always on the verge of a little too dry.  Oh, if every other living thing was so easy to care for!  I can only feed the heck out of these and hope they bloom in cycles as they did last year, colorful from Thanksgiving to Easter, before they peter out and rest for the summer.

I've been, as you know, collecting colors as rapidly as the breeders frantically develop them, and although the classically-marketed Zygocactus was bright red (for CHRISTMAS), their palette range over the past few years has been greatly expanded.  I used to have a red and white striped one as well, but I don't know if it's just currently reluctant to bloom or if I lost it in the great house freeze of 2004 (or whenever it was).  

I like the new colors, truth be told, as much as the old classic red or white.   I feel the vivid fuchsia at the top is just to die for, and the orange of paragraph #4 is one of the most unusual. The salmon to the right is a subtle hue, and the soft yellow variety below is much more rich-colored in person.   Notice that I've long lost the variety names, if they ever existed, and merely describe them as the welcome color they are for the dreary months of winter.   Here in the sunroom, I can look out windows at the dreary dying garden beyond and my eyes carry this color outdoors into the landscape.

One wonderful part of gardening and blogging is that I'm always learning something and today I've learned that the Schlumbergera are divided into two main groups, the earlier-blooming Truncata, with pointed teeth,  horizontal stems and flowers and yellow pollen, and the later-blooming Buckleyi, with more rounded teeth, flowers that hang down, and pink pollen.  I appear to have primarily Truncata, since the pollen of all currently-blooming seems to be yellow and the flowers are all hanging down, and leaf shapes on the 7 plants not yet blooming seem similar to those that are.  I'll have to search for the Buckleyi, now knowing there is a difference. 

Christmas Conspiracies

While ProfessorRoush is usually a reasoned and contemplative individual (please pay no attention to Mrs. ProfessorRoush's cackling in the background), I am not ashamed to admit that the occasional attractive conspiracy theory does obtain some small foothold of territory in my mental processes.  In contrast, however, to those crackpots who insist that there was never a moon landing or those who maintain that the earth is flat, despite all the growing evidence against either view, I feel compelled to reveal, here for the first time, a real, personally documented, grand conspiracy. 

I'm positive that all of you, all gardeners and shoppers, all homeowners and plantspeople, have been experiencing a great sense of unease as Thanksgiving approached and local store aisles filled with holiday decorations and unwanted unnecessities, yet you've all likely been unable to pinpoint the cause of your disquiet.  I'll admit that I shared that underlying apprehension with you, until suddenly a great revelation appeared to me last week and, to my eternal shock I became aware, you might say "woke", that one of the great mysteries of civilization had been developing right in front of my eyes; a mystery I shall now reveal.

WHERE THE HECK ARE ALL THE CHRISTMAS CACTUSES THIS YEAR?   Normally, by this time, every checkout aisle and every floral display area would be filled with wilting but blooming $6-$9 pots of colorful red and white and pink and fuchsia Christmas cacti raised especially to capture your whimsy and your excess cash during your vulnerable moments of holiday shopping.  This year, there are none available, not one anywhere near Manhattan Kansas, a fact which I confirmed by personally visiting every big box store, grocery store, and hardware store in the area this week.  

I started out on this conspiracy track innocently, merely wanting to see if a new color or variety was available to add to my collection and brighten Mrs. ProfessorRoush's windows, yet the absence of the cacti became more evident with every store I searched.  Querying the internet for an explanation has been similarly unsatisfactory.  There have been no media reports of mass destruction of Christmas Cactus nursery facilities, nor scientific papers on sudden mutations of fungal wilt that threaten the extinction of the cacti group.  Asking Google the simple question "Where have the Christmas cacti gone?" is rewarded only by 10,591,251 occurrences inanely explaining how to make a cactus bloom, and it undoubtedly results in one's name being added to some secret list somewhere as well as causing your mail and social media feed to fill up with hundreds of ads for plant sales and fertilizer.  

We will call it the Great Missing Christmas Cactus Conspiracy of 2022, or "CCC-22", and later generations will remember this blog entry as the initiation of the movement alerting the world to their loss.  It is a fact that Government officials are completely silent on the issue and appear to be taking no action to investigate the mystery.  This is surely an occasion for Congressional inquires and appointment of special prosecutors if ever there were, don't you agree?  The President, Dr. Fauci, or at least the Illuminati must be behind the disappearance.  No, wait, it's COVID-19, isn't it?   SARS-CoV-2 was not developed to destroy democratic societies, save Medicare, and unleash the New World Order, nay, the ultimate goal by some powerful fiendish billionaire Christmas-cactus-hater was for the virus to wipe out annual production and commerce in Christmas cacti, wasn't it?

If you don't hear from me again, you'll know I touched a nerve somewhere.   Wake up, everyone, before it's too late to save the cacti!  Write your Congresspersons, call your Senators, and let's make our Christmas-cactus-loving-voices heard!

Finally, Spring

Lilac 'Betsy Ross'

At last, Spring has arrived in Manhattan, Kansas.  It is and was a long-awaited, miss-conceived, desiccated Spring, but I'm declaring Spring nonetheless.  I have to, for if I waited any longer, I'd be in mid-summer and sweltering. This is no longer  a Spring of a few wee annual bulbs now, this is full-blown everything growing Spring.   No spring rains yet, but hopefully the ground will get re-saturated before July steals it all away.   There is plenty of wind blasting past, however, wind that kept me awake all last night and wind that has kept my roof from being repaired for over 3 months since the December gales that lifted a few shingles.   And frosts galore, frosts that ruined my annual celebration with Magnolia stellata and has dampened the impact of purple 'Ann' this year.

'Betsy Ross'

I was struck, two mornings ago, by the morning light and beauty of my awakening back yard.   Color drew me out to take the photograph above, pastels and spring pinks, a cool morning but sufficient to celebrate the collage of spring colors in the back yard; volunteer redbud in the foreground, occasional blush of magnolia in the borders, my red peach in full bloom in the back.   And the houses on the ridgeline south, across the golf course, visible now, but invisible to my inner eye which still sees the bare hilltops I used to see here.

My primary focus this morning is on my lilac line, the end of the garage pad at the house, beloved pink and white 'Annabelle' at the back.   Some are in full bloom, some just partially open and others yet to start, but a mere whiff of air on that side of the house saturates you with lilac and converts every racing thought to a lazy dream.  The "Most Spectacular" award this year goes to Syringa oblata 'Betsy Ross', a  2000 U.S. National Arboretum introduction from the 1970's breeding program of Dr. Donald Egolf.   My 'Betsy Ross', planted in 2013 and photographed this cloudy morning.  She is certainly now well worth the Andrew Jackson photograph I traded for her when she was a small plant.   Perfect white panicles, non-damaged this year by frost, wind or rain, and as fragrant as a bottle of perfume.   I can't ask for more.

It is, in fact Spring outdoors and indoors right now.   This rare (I think) yellow Christmas cactus is now blooming for the third time since November, and the colors are even more rich and deep than it's first bloom.  Fully 80% of my Christmas cacti are still cycling bloom, months and months of delicate color to fill the sunroom.

I leave you, this cloudy morning of Spring, with the last of the daffodils that live in the coldest, darkest, northern exposure of my landscape.   Last to bloom, they are protected there from wind at the least, perfect blooms and cheery faces to remind  me they will be back next year again.   Yes, we've had a few sprinkles this morning to brighten them up, but the ground beneath is bone dry, crying for moisture, for the re-quenching rains that should come with Spring.   Is that still too much to ask for? 

Indoor February Color

February already?!   It feels like Christmas has barely past, that 2021 was still a newborn just past the birth canal of 2020, let alone now a senile monarch passing the throne to 2022.  We have yet to lock horns with winter, a few days of snow here and there, fleeting and flown, but soon I expect crocus and Scilla and budding daffodils raising their heads.  

For now, it remains the duty of the Christmas cacti, or Thanksgiving cacti, or whatever the things are, to bring color to a brown landscape and brighten the morning.   My collection, as it could be termed, of Christmas cacti expanded yet again this year, with the addition of a pale yellow cultivar to the whites, reds, and pinks, and one beautiful new small plant that bears blossoms of an unmistakably orange hue.  

All are blooming again, now for the second time this year, with the exception of two.  One is the orange variety which sulks in the kitchen where Mrs. ProfessorRoush has not allowed it enough sunlight.  It is, I'm sorry to say, a Schlumbergera which is...slumbering...in a post-gluttony phase of bloom.   And I'm chagrined because I was sure I had a picture of it, taken at the peak of color, but, alas, the picture is gone, lost I say, to the silicon and ceramic wafers of computer memory.   I'll try to edit this post later as it blooms again and add it in.

The second current nonbloomer is the very fuchsia variety I've had for a decade.   It has also bloomed, and is in bud again, but I've stolen the picture here from an earlier blog entry; purloined electrons to jog your memory.

For now, veuillez m'excuser, but you must content yourself with the white, yellow, red, and fuchsia varieties.  The reds and fuchsias are, I recognize, only distinguished from each another by subtleties, small differences in the percentage of white on each petal or the shade of carmine or cardinal it most resembles, but I celebrate the individuality of all.   The reddest is at the top of this blog entry, while two other varieties, each a little more white to the petals, also vie for the "best Christmas colors" display.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the colors of February, hues of life to carry you through to that first glimpse of yellow daffodils....

Jewels Outside & Within

 ProfessorRoush woke up to a thanks-filled morning after a cold night on the prairie covered the grass with a heavy frost, bejeweling it with ice for the sun to caress.   I know they may be difficult to see in the photograph below, but when I took the picture, the sun, already well above rising, was reflected in little starry points all over the grass, gleaming diamonds among the frosted chaff. The tans, umbers, ochers and reds of last season's grasses all provide a proper blasé background for the new jewels among it.

I awoke to the ice jewels outside and to the soul-filling contrast of all the colors in our decorated house, the reds and greens of Christmas within at odds with the blander world normal of the prairie outside.   I'm thankful for many jewels within the house as well, the carefully chosen emblems of the holiday artfully arranged by Mrs. ProfessorRoush.   This year, this fake poinsettia wreath magically popped up from somewhere into our living room near the TV, and it brings me joy daily with its cheery welcome from the wall.  

I found joy myself recently, and added it to the house, this wooden painted snowman purchased on a recent impulse at a hardware store.  There have been occasions in life, like this one, where I've seen something and inexplicably want to own it, instantly coveting some simple thing whose beauty may only be seen by me and overlooked by others.   I've lived long enough now to listen to these urges, these desires, which burn like fire if unfilled.   Times were, my will always strong, I resisted them, parsimonious to a fault, foolish in my frugalness, only to later rue and regret the lost chance.   Today, with more money available above the necessities and niceties of life, I often give in, collecting joyful things in a twisted version of Marie Kondo's question that she originally asked to help us simplify life, "Does it spark joy?"    Yes, this extravagant $25.00 snowman, added now to our mantle, brings me joy, even when I can't explain it.

And I feel joy and thankfulness also for the half-dozen Christmas cacti that adorn our south windows.   I've purchased them over the years and all have been in bloom recently, each a unique color, bright red, white, pink, fuchsia, yellow, and orange represented in their delicate and fleeting beauty.   The sun outside catches them in the morning, gloried like the fuchsia-touched blossom at the top of this blog, yet other jewels in my world.   Some mornings, mornings like this one, I can scarcely catch my breath at the beauty of the world, so many jewels that life gives us each day.

Basil Indicator

ProfessorRoush is, at times, an incredibly bad gardener of houseplants.  I am usually able to keep them alive, but, with the exception of an occasional Pothos sp., they don't often thrive under my care.  There is, for example, an infamous episode some years ago during a period when I had approximately 20 thriving orchids and 10 Christmas cacti, all of which would even occasionally bloom.  I adjusted the thermostat when we left for a Christmas vacation and we came home a week later to find that I'd accidentally shut the heat off and the house was hovering at 33ºF.  Not a single orchid survived the episode.  The Christmas cacti sulked for a bit, but eventually decided to give me a second chance. 

I restrict myself these days to Zygocactus and Pothos.  Occasional gifted houseplants and the annual poinsettias are held prisoner and then offered as sacrificial lambs to the houseplant gods to curry their favor in the direction of my Christmas cacti.  In place of the ceremonial altar and a flint knife, I have substituted benign neglect and the arid, desert-like humidity of the natural Kansas environment, watering only when I see signs of wilt.

That practice has not been kind to the mandarin orange and lemon tree that Mrs. ProfessorRoush insisted I add to our floral menagerie.  Both trees spend their summers outdoors on the porch, where it is moderately humid and I frequently forget to water them. They spend their winters indoors where the humidity is very low and I frequently forget to water them. 

Recently, I noticed that my fairly spindly orange tree was wilting at the top (above).  "Wait a minute," I thought, "orange leaves don't wilt; they yellow and fall off."  And indeed, on a closer look, I recognized there was a second stem in the pot; a spindly sun-starved basil that presumably was an offspring from one of our herbs, which also spend summers in pots on the back porch.  You can see the second stem better here at the left.

I'm certainly not going to root up this volunteer.  If a weed is just a plant in the wrong place, this "weed" is in the right place.  Mrs. Basil has done me a favor by going to seed and placing an offspring here in this pot to be nurtured.  The rest of the winter, I think I'll just watch the basil as an indicator for watering this pot and the lemon tree next to it.  Maybe both trees will now have a better chance to live to see another spring.  Besides, the basil smells so good.   

 

Christmas Cactuses (or is it Cacti?)

I feel that I must confess.  I'm a crazy collecting Christmas Cactus closet connoisseur. (Yes, I also have a fondness for alliteration).  I can't help but purchase any new color of Christmas cactus I run across.  There surely must be some twelve-step program to help me.  Hi, I'm ProfessorRoush and I am a Christmas Cactus addict....

There is, in my estimation, no easier houseplant to grow than the Schlumbergera sp. epiphytes, otherwise known as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Crab Cactuses (Cacti?). I should reveal that at one time I grew over 30 orchids, 15 Christmas Cacti, a handful of African Violets, and some assorted other houseplants.  When we went away for Christmas one year, somehow the heat for the house got turned off and upon our return one week later, I found one frozen upstairs toilet that had to be replaced and a whole bunch of dead orchids and violets.  The supposedly tropical Christmas Cacti survived somehow.  Or maybe it wasn't such a miracle since one plant hunter has described collecting specimens in areas of overnight temperatures down to 25F.  I've got one fuchsia Christmas Cactus that's been alive for 20 years and has produced umpteen offspring.  How many other houseplants do you grow that can claim such longevity in the face of the desert-like house conditions and the poor care of a typical homeowner?

Most of the year, they sit there in my windows, dark green and healthy, needing water only about every other week and a repotting in organic matrix every third year or so.  But now, around Christmas, they bloom forth to add to the colorful holiday.  I know there are lots of instructions available for bringing them into bloom by exposure to cold nights and decreasing photoperiods, but mine are right on schedule this year, aided only by the decreasing light level of the insulated windows they sit next to.  They're even quicker to bloom if you've got them in an old house with single-pane old-style windows.  If you have to resort to trying to force buds, flower buds will form reliably by providing 16 hours of darkness daily for 8 days at 61F temperature. 

I've seen no insect predators on the plants and the biggest danger to their survival is by overwatering them;  remember that these are succulents and treat them as such.  An overwatered Christmas Cactus will shrivel up and become limp, which just encourages more watering by the unwary, killing the plant.  Most sources say to keep them away from strong light sources such as South-facing windows, but yet mine seemed to thrive this Summer outside, placed in a corner of the house where they got full Eastern and Southern sun exposure from sunrise through about 1:00 p.m. 

The easy reproduction by rooting stems of Christmas Cactus makes me look like a genius to the friends who have benefited from the divisions I've given away.  To propagate them, twist off pieces of stems one to three segments long and then allow them to dry for 3-4 days to allow formation of a callus at the broken end.  Planted into a suitable humus-rich medium, they'll usually then root quickly in warm environments.

Native to the moist coastal mountain forests of south-eastern Brazil, Schlumbergera are leafless epiphytes with segmented green stems.  The tubular downward-facing flowers, composed of 40 or so petals that are actually "tepals", are adapted for pollination by hummingbirds, although my Christmas Cacti won't ever benefit from the arrangement here in Kansas.  You can find named cultivars, but typically all the cacti we ever see for sale locally will be labeled only by color.  The white Christmas Cactus above is, however, named "White Christmas", and I think the true red one at the left may have been "Kris Kringle".  But, whatever their names, at this time of year when everything outside is bleak, brown and drab in Kansas, I welcome the color they bring to the interior of my house.  And at least I can say that I'm able to keep a houseplant alive. 

By the way, according to the dictionaries I can find, either "Cacti" or "Cactuses" is the correct plural.  Evidently, for once, we're allowed to choose.