Please ID and care ideas source

[harix]

Healthy

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Sick?

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Hello, this is my first post. I had a beautiful night flowering cactus that due to a sprinkler problem looks sick. Please help with Identifying the plant and a good source for care suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[phil_SK]

It's Echinopsis oxygona. It should respond well to standard cactus cultivation - it's a fairly tough plant. Where I live is too cold to grow plants outside so I don't have any experience to offer you advice for general cultivation. What's "a sprinkler problem"? However, if those chippings/gravel are limestone, the soil will be more alkaline than this plant will enjoy. In the short term, try a few waterings with water taht's had some vinegar added (maybe a tablespoon per gallon - maybe others could comment if that sounds about right) and long term think about peeling back that gravel - if it is limestone - for a couple of feet around the plant and replacing it with some other kind of stone.

[harix]

Thanks for the quick ID! It is not limestone, it is a granite mixture designed for our desert landscaping (Phoenix, AZ). The sprinkler was not watering this section of yard. I guess my main question is , should I remove the black sections? The entire center of the plant is black but some of the arms are coming back and displayed some flowers after I fixed the sprinklers. The firsr picture is before the watering stopped, the second shows the black center area after watering resumed.

[greenknight]

The black is just corking - the old, woody part of the plant, which you couldn't see when it was all standing up. I just looked at mine - the base is the same color, but you can't see much of it.

This species likes a bit more water during the growing season than most desert cacti - though it can survive periods of extreme drought, it's not real happy about it, as you can see. It should recover, no need to do anything.