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A neighbour asked me if I would join her visit to a couple of garden senters. It Is always interesting to look at plants even if they aren’t cacti/succulents. The garden senters in question sells almost only outdoors plants, so I wasn’t expecting to find anything for myself. But to my surprise I did, and to very reasonable prices too!

I have been wanting a Rhipsalis mesembryanthemoides for a couple of years but haven’t seen any for sale here. What did I find? A large specimen ( pot about 17 cm.in diameter) and a Rhipsalis labeled as baccifera but I think it’s a R.baccifera subs. horrida. The latter plant I have never seen for sale here before.

An update on some of the epiphytic cacti

Some of you may remember this post; https://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewto ... ed#p386873

So I thought I would give an update on how it went. First; I will stress that I DON’t think that the advice I was given was wrong! I am very grateful for advice from other grovers. What I do think though, is that I am growing in a climate very different from the majority here (?) and that may play a role in the outcome.And of course, I am growing my plants indoors, not outdorors or in a GH. ( all on own roots)

I reduced the watering and misting of the mentioned plants in the thread above and the same for the Schlumbergera opuntioides and the S.lutea ( purchased later).

The S.opuntioides never had any issues , in fact it grew very well. Late in the fall / early winter I managed to break off more than half the plant by accident, I could have kicked myself! I tried to root the accident cutting but it never took and eventually died. I don’t think it helped that the growing season was over. As the rest of the epiphytic cacti in this thread it didn’t take well to the new regime with less misting and watering ( the remaining part of the plant) In fact it went so limp, that I feared it would die.

The Schlumbergera rosea neither liked the new watering /misting regime, the new growth on it dried up and it just looked unhappy.

The Schlumbergera lutea ( which Ithink is S.lutea subs.lutea) , the newest stem segments dried up, slowly, one by one and I feared I would loose the plant.

The Schlumbergera rosea ssp.riograndensis didn’t develop more spots but it too lost stem segment, one by one and again I feared I would loose the plant.

The Hatiora herminae , I was sure the plant was lost. It had only five stem segment left in the end and looked very unhappy and shriveled.

All these plants of course was watered and occasionly misted but less than before, taking care that the substrate dried up well between waterings.

So in late may/early june I desided to reverse the regime totally, as it was very clear that the plants was heading in only one direction and that was downhill and I felt that I or rather the plants hadn’t much to loose anyway.

So I started to heavily mist the plants once a day, to the point there the plants got dripping wet. To avoid the substrate getting soaked, I held the plant at an angle, so the substrate got moist but not soaked.

The first two weeks I didn’t see any results and I feared it would be to late for them. Then the opuntioides started gaining ‘weight’ slowly and the others followed. When I saw new growth on the lutea I was very pleased and the ‘common’ rosea just exploded suddenly with new growth. Both lutea and the rosea have doubled their size since I started the new regime and both the rosea ssp.riograndensis and the H.herminae has new stem segments growing. The latter was the last one to ‘turn’ .The stem segments looked like dry sticks, even though it have gotten watered but less than before. I belive it took close to a month before it looked alive again.

Once again I would like to stress the fact that I do not! think I was given wrong advices nor I am trying to tell others ‘how to do it’. This works in our home and our climate ( and microclimate, not to forget) it may have been the road to disaster in another climate/under other growing conditions. It’s just ment as an update on how the plants are doing now

Here are some pics. I regret that I didn’t take any ‘before’ pics, which would have been much more informative.

Nearly there..

The flowers opened and what a display for such a small plant Not much else have happened in the flowering department this summer or should we rather say monsun? I begin to wonder if I am wrong about which country I live in.. Apart from one week with very high temperatures, it have rained, rained and rained even more for weeks.

Thankfully the little Parodia doesn’t seem to be that dependent upon high temperatures and sunshine as the Gymno’s. They all had flower buds which developed to various degrees, the ones that opened up, did so only partially. It have dawned on me that Gymno’s aren’t the best plants here, if one hopes for flowers. They seems to like it pretty hot and sunny, before they consider ‘opening up the shop’. I would guess their natural pollinators think the same, hence the unwillingness to open the flowers.

Most of the Mammilarias have had some flowers though, only wish they were a bit bigger. Have been looking for M.longimamma, but so far no success. The flowers on the species looks very nice.

I got this Fero last year. It had both mealis and root mealies, so I gave it a real cure last year. This spring I noticed that it didn’t plumped up after watering and the spines looked a bit dull. So I took it out of the pot. Most of the roots seemed dead and there were root mealis present still. After removing the dead roots it wasn’t much left it was quite hollow beneath.

Long story short, it spent about a month on the sink, a lot of the time upside down, getting repeatedly rinsed and treated. After this I potted it in pure gravel, this time. I kept the gravel moist but only thing that happened that it lost more and more weight . After more than a month I didn’t had much hope of anything happening but decided to give the new substrate a try.

So I found a plastic container, filled it with a couple of centimeters with LECHUZA-PON, made sure it reached the now very hollow bottom of the cactus , watered and placed it in the container. I have kept the substrate moist to wet all the time, and after about three weeks I decided to check the bottom of the cactus. I lifted it and by first glance I thougt it was moldy. But no, it was roots! Hopefully it will survive and gain weight again.

That Fero looks in survival mode. I hope it plumps up soon. You kept it on moist substrate for 3 weeks? How bold.

ohugal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:23 pm That Fero looks in survival mode. I hope it plumps up soon. You kept it on moist substrate for 3 weeks? How bold.

Hi Ohugal I think you are right, it is in survival mode. For some reason pics I post here are less clear than they are on my tablet, maybee the downsizing plays a role? There are in fact lot more new roots on the plant than it looks like. Unfortunately the growing season is soon ending here and we have had an unusual cold and very wet summer, even for my area.

It may be wishful thinking but I think it’sa little bit fatter now than when I posted the pic. Bold..yes, one could say so but on the other hand I think that one could learn a lot from trying to rescuing plants with ‘unconventional methods. E.g. the cacti who had various degrees of rot ( bought last year in a dish). Of the three worst affected, only one died and it was rotted along the stem, on both sides. I am pretty sure that the ‘sun cure’ saved the rest.

The A.myriostigmas are still attached to the substrate with no alarming ‘wiggliness’ so far. Even with two good waterings since I repotted them. Hopefully they stay this way and survive. The flower bud on one of them is very slowly growing, if we could get a bit of sun and higher temperatures than 8-10 degrees celsius in the daytime, it may develop and open up. If the myriostigmas survive the winter and seems to thrive next year, I will try to get a couple of asterias. A species I have admired for years , even though I have never seen one IRL.

My Lepismium lumbricoides have produced a single flower, very delicate with soft pink ‘interior’. Tried to get a pic of the flower but that wasn’t easy as it hangs a bit difficult to reach.

Four more Astrophytums moved in.. :)There was a discount on cacti, so I only paid about € 2,5 for each plant, how could I resist? Only things that worries me, is that they were placed in a couple of centimeters with standing water, so the substrate was dripping wet. Hopefully they haven’t stood there for a long time.

Got these Mammilaria gracilis or is it vetula now? in the mail. Nothing special but quite nostalgic since I remember the species from younger years

Mrs.Green wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:10 pm Got these Mammilaria gracilis or is it vetula now? in the mail. Nothing special but quite nostalgic since I remember the species from younger years

Same with me: found a tiny plant aside an other cactus I got and decided to keep it in a small pot...
Give it more sun to form centrals.

Same with me. In my early cactus times there were 3 M gracilis according to C. Backeberg: gracilis itself and v. fragilis and v. pulchella. It seems to me that Mrs.Green has second one and 7george third one.

Two myriostigmas posted on 22nd August, 81E67163 are not simple myriostigmas.
The gene of Fukuryu is mixed in them, I think.

7george; Nice little plant you have there . About the centrals; I wonder if all three of them grow visible centrals? ( if we are assuming there are three different gracilis)

Anttisepp; thanks a lot The seller told me that the motherplant of my cuttings was bought in 1982. I wonder if it’s out of fashion at the moment? Haven’t seen a single plant for sale here since I started with cacti again.( in shops)


Hanazono; Thank you very much I was going to ask you about that. That’s the reason why I picked these plants , among several others. As you may see, there arent ‘warts’ on all sides on the cacti, is there any chance they will develop ‘warts’ between the ribs that are normal now?

As mentioned earlier, the summer this year have been unusual cold and wet .. All the Gymnos produced buds but the ones that did open their flowers, did it only halfway. Which is a bit disappointing when you see all the buds just waiting to burst but no real action.

From what I have read Gymnos seems to be a bit more depentdent on warmth and ‘steady’ sunshine than some other windowsillsized cacti species? After the wet and cold summer we got a quite nice fall, so far at least with higher temps and a bit more sunshine. Which may be the explanation for the late flowering on a couple of the Parodias? This lovely sight met me today checking on some of the cacti. No less than six beautiful flowers on this P. warasii Nice sitrus smell too.

A small flower on one of the Notocactus uebelmannianus appeared too. Wonder if the cacti are a bit confused , cold and wet summer, warm and sunnier fall.

The Astrophytum myriostigmas are still firmly attached to the substrate, no alarming wiggliness. I begin to wonder if there was something wrong with the three first ones I bought, since they all died within a month after purchase. One of the myriostigmas had a flower bud when I bought it but I doubt it will open, unless we gets even better weather. The same plant is producing another bud. Do myriostigma buds go dormant or do they dry up and fall off if they are produced to late in the year?