Cereus hildmannianus

Well, a few posts back I was talking about how this plant fell over and got beheaded, I thought I'd give a little update...



as you can see, the two small branches that were coming up from the bottom of the plant have grown from about 3 inches to 8 in a relatively short period of time... thriving off a root system that was established to support a 4 foot plant no doubt. The top of the stump has begun a branch right below the break, and the one branch that was already there has put on about 6 inches of growth also.

The two 'logs' that I laid down on their side in the flower bed show no signs of new arms coming up, nor do they show any signs of throwing roots into the soil like the guys on the web-site said they would, but I'm not giving up. They'll probably do everything suddenly in the space of a day... the actual growing tip, which was damaged in the fall, and I cut off, is about 5 inches, has established roots... so it should start growing anytime now... I placed it in a pot of portaluca... I have three rectangular pots of portaluca sitting on a brick wall out front. They bloom like crazy all summer, and whatever random cuttings happen tend to get stuck in there, so there's always some encheveria, semperverium, sedum and what-not rooting in the light shade of the annuals.

It's kind of time for me to start looking for a bigger pot, so I can get all these cereus cuttings planted together into one pot to save room when I have to bring it in come fall.

Also in the yard is a Golden Cat-tail... Cleistocactus winteri. This is a great plant that produces wonderful bright red blooms, but doesn't seem particularly inclined to this year... don't know why.



But, the lack of blooms is more than made up for in the new growth that's it's decided to put out this summer...