Tagged With: Schlumbergera truncata

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Occasionally, a little bit of benign neglect is exactly what a plant needs to thrive. This Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) has been on the floor of the kitchen, underneath Solomon’s cage, for a while and although it gets watered from time to time, it isn’t getting the attention it probably deserves. That’s generally a recipe for dead plants, but this one gut just enough attention, apparently, because it’s come into bloom a few weeks ahead of the holiday it’s named for. I took a few photos of entire flowers but they are mostly white with only a very small amount of pink and therefore don’t show a lot of detail in a photograph. I thought this photo of the pale stamens with their pollen and the red and pink style was nicer.

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Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

This Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) is somewhat neglected though most of the year. That’s actually a good thing as they really don’t want to much attention. It sits on a shelf in our kitchen (breakfast room, really) and gets watered only occasionally. Then, one day around this time of year, you look over and it’s covered with these beautiful blooms. Naturally we move it to a more prominent position while it blooms and then it will go back into relative obscurity for the rest of the year.

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Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

Schlumbergera truncata (Thanksgiving Cactus)

This is the second of our Thanksgiving cacti (Schlumbergera truncata) to bloom. The first was mostly white (see Monday, November 23, 2020) and this one, as you can see, is mostly magenta. The third, also magenta, is blooming now, as well. Their flowers are really attractive and I think especially so when shown against a dark background. In this case, the background is the outdoors at night (our kitchen door) with the flower lit by my camera’s flash. S. truncata can be differentiated from the Christmas cactus (S. russelliana) by the pointy ‘teeth’ along the edges of the segments and the fact that the flowers are not symmetrical (the top half is different to the bottom half).

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