It’s the most wonderful time of the year: no…not Christmas, but cactus blooming season! At least, the start of it.
This is a super busy time of year for anyone who tries to produce their own seed, grows things from seed, or just has a substantial collection. If you’re trying to produce seed, you need to check plants daily, sometimes multiple times a day, to ensure you catch the blooms at the appropriate time to pollinate them. If you’re growing things from seed, this is a prime time of year to repot seedlings from their sowing containers into the larger pots that get them to a sellable size. Even if you’re not managing inventory for sale, this is the time of year to be repotting your existing cacti so they have fresh soil and room to grow in the upcoming growing season. Not all cacti need to be repotted each spring, but if you have one that’s root bound and looking ready, this is the time to do it.
That aside, I have so many cacti (and a few of my stapeliads!) blooming this time of year. Every afternoon when I visit the greenhouse, it’s exciting to see what flowers have newly opened.
This is a very image heavy post – if it takes a bit to load, please be patient!
I’m never upset about this plant. Ever.
Sulcorebutia rauschii var. “Mars”
Mine is a grafted plant, and I routinely pull off pups to root and establish for sale. The little single-head pups are tiny, and I think people overestimate how hard they’ll be to keep established and growing… They’re troopers. I have forgotten pups from this plant in random places, found them weeks or months later, plopped them in dirt, and they’ve rooted. Sulcorebutias are delightful and at least one belongs in everyone’s cactus collection.
I’ve written about this plant before – my Sulcorebutia arenacea. Once you get them rooted and established, the blooms are substantial, frequent, and gorgeous.
I’m delighted to see mine beginning to pup around the entire base. Flowers, and pups, seem to grow heaviest where the sun is strongest in the morning – so consider your placement when encouraging your own to bloom. The sunny yellow-orange flowers aren’t as neon-flashing as the “Mars”, but it’s still lovely to see.
I picked up a few Echinocereus laui fully intending to sell them all, but once they started blooming I struggled to list them for sale.
A dense species with white spines, the flowers are so pretty and striking it’s hard to resist them. If I’m lucky, I’ll have seeds this year, but I don’t think I planned appropriately. They do pup readily, so I may try potting them up into larger pots and seeing if I can propagate them through division rather than seeds.
Green to yellow flowers aren’t usually my favorite, but the contrast of flowers against the red spines and deep green body of Echinocereus viridiflorus are hard to resist. When water is witheld, they shrink nearly to the soil line, but will plump up quite a bit if given regular water.
More water means more flowers, and the blooms are unique with their almost lime-hued color. I only have one of this species, so no seeds for me – but it makes me smile to see the flowers anyway.
A beautiful species in terms of cactus body color, Eriosyce crispa has these lovely pink flowers – and quite a few of them!
The cactus body is generally purple with a brushing of white farina, and they mature small, only a few inches wide. Excellent species for those with limited space, but more finicky when it comes to care.
The Eriosyce crispa species is also known as Neochilenia crispa, depending on where you get it – and the bloom color and plant color can seem considerably different based on the photo taken! The one above was during a cloudy day in fairly balanced light, while the blooms at left were photographed in the afternoon and warmer lighting. In person, the flowers look identical!
I wanted to post the two photos of my Eriosyce crispa to highlight how much the color tone of an image can influence the appearance of a flower. If you can’t see a difference in the two images, take that as helpful information for your viewing screen color balance – it means it’s not truly balanced for “true color”. I’ve been fortunate to be able to measure the computer screen I’m using to create this post for color accuracy thanks to my day job, and can say confidently they are different hues!
But they’re both photos of the same species. The photo looking from the top down, with a warmer, yellowish hue and little of the cactus body visible is great for identifying bloom characteristics, but terrible for verifying that the cactus itself is the same as the one with a more color-balanced image (at right, from the side).
Neither photo, alone, is suitable for confidently identifying a cactus in your collection, but combined, you can use them as benchmarks for spine density per areole, flowering trends (petal shape, color, striping, stamen color and shape, etc), and cactus body color. Flowers are usually the confirmation for a species, so to truly identify something in your own collection, strive for blooms – and check very specific characteristics!
My epiphyllums started early this year, and boy have they put on a show!
This is Epiphyllum “Derby Star”, and an example of how hard it can be sometimes to confirm color online. The characteristics of this bloom are orange and pink, extra large – but what does that really mean?
In this case, after careful scrutiny online and from the Epi society’s photos – it’s the orangey color with those brilliant pink streaks. Interestingly, different blooms have different degrees of pink saturation.
This Epiphyllum “Challenge” is a gorgeous, more reddish pink flower than the “Derby Star” – but some of the Derby’s flowers were nearly as dark when it first produced them!
That ambiguity between blooms for a single plant is why growers are diligent about labeling, and why you can’t just look at a flower or three online and decide that’s what your plant is. Blooms vary in a single plant for a multitude of reasons, and genetically, they also vary significantly. For someone looking to buy something specific, it’s misleading to sell them a named cultivar if there’s no provenance to the name.
What is “provenance” when it comes to cacti and succulents?
It’s a chain of verified sources for a given species, cultivar, variety, or clone. I could dig the aloes out of a landscaping median and label them as the rare “Blue Street Cred” aloe clone, but that wouldn’t make them legitimate, valuable, or something you could reproduce.
For cacti like Epiphyllum, or aloe hybrids, a ton of effort goes into creating hybrids that bloom or pup with consistent appearances. They’re able to be patented!
Someone selling a name clone or cultivar, like my epis above, will be able to tell you where they got their own plants. It’s up to you if you are happy with the verification.
Mine, for example, have come from the cuttings sold at the San Diego Safari Park from the collection there, as well as from the local epi society.
My Astrophytum capricorne specimens always put on a show. That brilliant red center!
The flowers on an Astrophytum caput-medusae are the only way you’d be sure these are as closely related to the other Astrophytum species as they are.
I have three Astrophytum ornatum specimens, and I swear they collude to never all bloom at the same time. I had a couple of flowers open at once this spring, and was able to get some seed – but so far, just barely enough to sow for myself!
They’re happy to keep blooming all summer long, though, so I’m optimistic for more flowers and the resulting fruits.
My lovely pink-flowering Astrophytum ornatum. Several of the seedlings from this plant are at a size where they’re starting to bloom too, and I’ve been selfishly keeping them to see if any have pink flowers as well.
So far, the answer is no, but one can dream.
Cute little Turbinicarpus alonsoi I acquired in 2022; I love the delicate pink flowers with their little dark stripe down each petal.
It flowers early, it flowers regularly, and I have no idea what triggers blooms. Compared to my other cacti, it seems random – I’ve seen it flower nearly every month of the year, but never the same days/months year after year.
My behemoth of a Neochilenia jussieui – aka Neoportencia jussieui or whatever we’ve decided to call these lately.
I recently refreshed the soil in its pot, and plopped it right back in. It’s beginning to produce pups, it’s growing in all kinds of wierd ways, it blooms profusely, and I absolutely love it. Super cool species, decent size for the bench but not so big you’re worried about it overtaking everything. I need 10 more of these.
The one succulent that’s crept into this post: Caralluma acutangula.
Deep black-purple clusters of flowers, and lots of them. Stinky, as all stapeliads (corpse flowers) are. Do I mind the stink? Nah. I hold my breath and appreciate the clump of textured death breath blooms for what they are.
Okay I mind the stink a little, but it’s such a cool plant and flower that it’s forgiveable. It’s also not as bad as some other species. You probably know at least one person who smells worse than this plant. You’ll be fine. Go get one. A caralluma, not a person.
Domino cactus, or Easter Lily cactus, Echinopsis oxygona is another compact growing species with huge, beautiful blooms that are pleasantly fragrant. Lighter in scent than Discocactus, they’re still lovely, but less noticeable in open air.
As forgiveness for the stink pictured above, enjoy one of the most delightfully fragrant species in my greenhouse: Discocactus crystallophilus. I have a handful of seedlings growing, and these cacti are an absolute delight.
You’ll see the flowers suddenly peek up in the morning or around lunch time, just a little nub in the pseudo-cephalus fluff at the top. By dark, the flowers are fully emerged and beginning to open. In the morning when you head out to the greenhouse or to your patio, they’re incredibly fragrant with a wonderful perfumey scent. If you’ve smelled night-blooming jasmine, these are similarly potent.
This time of year is when the repeated flowers of Gymnocalycium begin to make their appearance, and they keep it up month after month after month!
I have several types of Gymnocalycium pflanzii, which are easy to spot with their chiseled rows, lightly fuzzy areoles, and the big white or pink flowers with deep reddish-pink centers.
I was very excited to snag this crested Gymnocalycium pflanzii thanks to a friend, and I’m happy to see that the monstrose/crested nature isn’t discouraging it from blooming. Some of my other monstrose cacti bloom rarely or not at all!
The bloom color and shape confirms what I’d suspected – this is a Gymnocalycium pflanzii.
I love the brilliance of Notocactus flowers, and the relatively common Notocactus uebelmannianus (AKA Parodia werneri) is no exception. This little specimen is in the ground outdoors, and it’s easy to see when it’s blooming thanks to those neon-purple flowers.
It’s been sunburnt and shares a lot of space with weeds, but it keeps going regardless! Their blooming season is shorter than I’d like, but I love it nonetheless.
These cacti are popular for a good reason based on their color and spines alone, and when they bloom – what a show!
Echinocereus rigidissimus var. rubrispina, and happily I have three that all tend to bloom together. I’ve been diligent about hand-pollinating the flowers, and I’m positive I’ll have more seed this year.
As the weather warms up, the cacti produce their flowers, and prepare their fruits for the summer when birds, rodents, and other creatures are eager for the food.
For us humans, it’s a delightful time when you can enjoy a show from your otherwise subdued cacti. Enjoy the show! I certainly am. I visit the greenhouse, and my cactus plantings, at least once a day, even in the noon heat. It’s worth it to see the beautiful blooms, smell the sweet fragrance, and see something so pretty and so fleeting.
