"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.
Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Showing posts with label Schlumbergera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schlumbergera. Show all posts
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Saturday, February 5, 2022
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.
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Plant Pets and Plant Zoos
'Hope for Humanity' |
People treat plants like pets! Of course! ProfessorRoush treats plants like pets! I nurture them, I feed them, and I water them; I'm thrilled when they grow and perform well and I'm disappointed when they crap in their beds. An epiphany, like so many others, right before my eyes the entire time. Here I am, veterinarian and gardener for a lifetime, and I've never realized that so, so many of my plants are pets. The rose, 'Hope for Humanity', pictured above and at left, blooming so perfectly red and bountiful, is a favorite of my treasured plant pets. So is the 'Blizzard' mockorange below, covered in white and perfuming the garden. And the fringed and crazy 'Pink Spritzer' peony, a wild Klehm creation, seen at the feet of the mockorange and in the closeup at the bottom of this blog. Inside the house, a collection of different Schlumbergera and a few pet orchids make up the indoor garden.
'Blizzard' Mockorange |
'Pink Spritzer' |
Plants as pets. Gardens as menageries. Maybe not so socially-conscious, but satisfying and educational at every turn. That's my style.
Friday, December 16, 2011
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.
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