My first pilocereus azureus bloom!

[tyrannosaurusjen]

I've had this cactus for over a year now, and love it. It's easily one of my favorite cacti in my collection and I was super excited last week to see it bloom for the first time! It has a second bud getting ready to flower, but this first one had me all kinds of excited.

http://imgur.com/a/kIxPv

[esp_imaging]

Nice!
Can you post a shot of the whole plant, please? Many of us North Europeans don't grow many columnars due to lack of space, so it would be great to see the whole plant.

[tyrannosaurusjen]

Here's most of it - it's not very big yet, only a couple feet tall.

http://imgur.com/cNsgtPL

[DaveW]

I was given a Pilosocereus (note it is Pilosocereus not Pilocereus since that former genus was invalid) from somebody who had grown it from a small Garden Centre plant, but though now standing on the floor in a pot it was nearly touching the ridge of his small greenhouse. I run an unheated greenhouse so knew it would not survive with me so gave it to a friend with a villa on the Costa del Sol in Spain. She took it over in her Toyota 4x4 and planted it in her garden there, When I next went over it was flowering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilosocereus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Pilo.jpg (93.32 KiB) Viewed 1651 times

Pilosocereus.jpg (94.05 KiB) Viewed 1651 times

Not as beautiful blue as yours though.

There were a lot of Pilosocereus top cuttings imported from habitat into Europe around the 1960/70's pre CITES. But requiring more heat than most in our cold part of Europe could give them most quickly died. There were also quite a few Pilosocereus (Backebergia) militaris top cuts with cephalium's imported too. However that plant is unusual in that it grows a cephalium on top of about a 20-30ft stem and unlike most cephalium bearing plants can even shed it's cephalium or grow through it and continue normal stem growth before producing another cephalium. Therefore many who bought those costly top cuts found their plant with cephalium reverting to normal growth again and would not form a new cephalium again until about 20ft high! You can see the reversion out of the top of the cephalium from a top cut in this link.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/488865" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.phytoimages.siu.edu/imgs/Cus ... 62706.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Brunãozinho]

Wow, interesting as always, thanks for sharing those curiosities, Dave!