Sunday, September 18, 2011

Random plant event: Cereus peruviuanus

My two biggest Cereus peruvianus have not been well-treated lately. They're just too big to fit anywhere in the house except the spot right by the plant room door, and even that isn't going to be working much longer:


At which point I intend to follow Cactus Blog's directions for cutting back a cactus, and hopefully that will work out for everybody and then I'll have three cacti I can mistreat.

But this post isn't about the tall one; this post is to note that I saw a bud on the short one the other day.


Branch bud? Flower bud? At this point, I have no idea which; I don't have much experience with either, and this is still pretty darn small. (Anybody know?) I've never gotten either one on my personal plants, unless you count the one that branched below the soil line. (It still hasn't poked through the soil. Clearly waiting for some kind of signal, I gather.) So whatever it is, I'm happy about it, I think.


5 comments:

Claude said...

looks like a branch starting to me.

Tom said...

Looks branchy to me. The flower buds are generally spine and fuzzless, even at that stage

Mary said...

I was given a cereus cactus about 6 years ago, and it blooms often. I've just finished with 12 buds, 8 of which bloomed heartily. But none of those buds, nor any of the previous ones, looked at all like what you are showing. Mine are sort of tubular, which just expand and expand into a huge green and white flower, and then it quite quickly turns black. I water the plant about weekly, and feed it miracle-gro maybe every few months.Nor does my plant have any branches. It's grown about a foot in 6 years.

Liza said...

Haha, commenter Mary is my Mom - I told her you had a question she was qualified to answer. She's been bragging on those blooms for weeks.

Tina and I used an electric knife to cut the Cereus cactus at KOBtv. Lopped the tops right off - worked great. As cactus jungle said, it's a two person job. One person cuts, the other catches.

Steve Asbell said...

I have a cereus seedling that's about 6 inches tall now (finally) and hope to overwinter it outdoors in my warmer climate. You should be able to lop off the tall one as long as the wound stays dry and heals well.