first epipyllums of the season
There are gardens zones that I consider to be mainly my spaces, and there are others that I consider John’s. The pond/shaded patio area is largely his garden playground, and he has a number of potted plants, including several different kinds of epiphyllums, the orchid cactus.
For a couple months now, we’ve been watching buds develop on one of the epis. The plants aren’t labeled, and there are enough of them that you forget which one is which. As we watched the little buds we had no idea what color the flowers would be. Judging by the sepals on the outside–red, maybe?
Oops. It’s actually a pure white inner flower when it opens. Here you can see the white petals are ringed with red-tinged, yellowish/greenish sepals.
When a plant gets several on them at a time, it would be a traffic-stopper if we had traffic in the back yard… For a cactus, epipyllums are on the wimpy side. Like, you have to squirt water at them every now and then. And they don’t cope well with freezing temperatures. And they like mostly-shaded conditions. Other than that, they’re pretty easy–and spectacular starting about now..
April 23 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: cactus • epiphyllums • orchid cactus | 6 Comments »
