There are three different jungle cactus in my collection, two orchid cactus and a night-blooming cereus. One of the orchid cactus plants is an old friend, having come from brother Tim over twenty years ago. It cycles through good and bad years and blooms every now and then with huge, electric magenta flowers. The second orchid cactus came from a cutting that Leon’s cousin brought to the family reunion several years ago. I grew it on and it has gotten to blooming size–we’ll see if any buds appear in the spring.
The night-blooming cereus is a gift from our friend Staci Adman who has an old “mother” plant that blooms for her every year. These plants are famous, not just for their fantastic, intricate white flowers, but also for the fact that they open in a time window narrow enough to visibly see, so you can literally watch the plant bloom. This plant was given to me about five years ago and it has done terribly for me. One year, I put it outside for the summer and some bugs found it and stripped it to almost nothing. I thought it was a goner, but it has come back a bit and gotten a good fat stem on it this year.
The flowers of these plants are simply shocking. Six or more inches across and in the brightest of colors, they provide a stark contrast to the simple, sometimes homely form of the branches from which they spring.
Like the holiday cacti, my future plans for these plants are to study their care and then apply my learnings to hopefully get bigger, healthier, more floriferous plants.