Selective cultivation has led to a very wide range of amazing flower colors like classic red and pink, but also yellow, orange, white, and multicolored. Read more: 10 Cheery Holiday Houseplants to Grow If You’re Bored With Poinsettias (Christmas cacti aren’t the only beautiful bloomers, by the way many other flowering cactus varieties offer a stunning show as well.) There’s really no mistaking a Christmas cactus’ flowers for anything else: they’re spectacular! Growing on the end of the segmented stems, the tubular flowers are triggered to open by short days and long nights, meaning they start blooming around the holiday season (and can bloom again in late winter, given the right conditions). The plants don’t have true leaves instead, they produce flattened, green stem segments (called cladodes) that look like long trailing leaves and are used to photosynthesize. They’re epiphytic succulents that grow on trees and are easy to recognize from their growth pattern. DescriptionĬhristmas cacti are what’s often referred to as Zygocacti in horticulture and are members of the tribe Rhipsalideae. (While “moisture” and “cactus” might sound like an unlikely pair, jungle cacti are not unusual they’re perennial favorites as houseplants and include coral cactus and fishbone cactus.)Īs epiphytes, Christmas cacti naturally grow on trees in a non-parasitic manner similar to other epiphytes like string of turtles, air plants, and arrowhead plants. They’re originally found in the same small area in tropical southeastern Brazil, where they grow in moist, high-altitude forests, soaking up the humidity, dappled sunlight, and balmy temperatures. So where do these parent species naturally hail from?īoth are jungle cacti (or tropical cacti), meaning they don’t occur in the arid habitats many of their other cactus cousins do. They’re a hybrid species resulting from crosses between two members of the same genus: Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving cactus) and russelliana. Strictly technically speaking, Christmas cacti don’t have a natural habitat. Common questions about Christmas cactus care.How do you make a Christmas cactus bloom?.
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