I've been very lax in posting photos of my blooming cacti this season. I have a good number of new plants this year and had a very good showing of flowers. Maybe an all-inclusive post in the fall will cover the whole season. It's been an abnormally warm summer in Vermont. I seem to remember many more days in the mid-80s to low 90s than days in the 70s. Very little cloud cover allowed for bright sun almost all summer, and days of light or moderate rain were fairly rare with only a handful of passing thunderstorms with downpours. The vast majority of my collection stayed outside the greenhouse and behind a trellis, allowing for bright direct but slightly shaded sun. What I've been calling my
Cereus peruvianus has remained in front of the trellis in hot, direct sun all day. I rarely watered it, letting Nature rain on it on those few rainy days. It spends each winter with a lot of light inside the glassed-in porch, the temperature in the 60s and a bit of water each month. I bought it probably six years ago at a big box store when it was about 9 or 10 inches tall. It is now 61 inches tall (including the potted roots), and two days ago I was shocked to see two flower buds on the back (shady side) of it.
I seem to remember that getting a potted
C. peruvianus (I guess currently it's considered to be
C. hildmannianus uruguayanus) to bloom, especially in northern New England, is difficult. I'm curious if it's actually that rare or not, and I'd like to know if it's just an oddity that the flowers are produced on the shady side. I've basically neglected this and just let it do its thing all these years, never expecting to see it flower.
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