New to cacti & need some help

[sathopol]

Hi all. I have just registered but seemed to have lost my first post so I will start again. I'm new to cacti. I live in Cyprus & this year decided that the few cacti I had desperately needed potting up from their terracotta yoghurt pots. Some how these cacti had actually grown over the years. I've now since identified them (I think) with the help of a cactus loving friend, who has also given me some cuttings of his cactus that he has had to rescue from under the jungle of his garden. I've also been visiting garden centres and now have a collection of about 23 cacti & 15 succulents. Unfortunately in Cyprus when you bu.y plants they are never labelled and the staff never seem to know what they're selling. If you ask the name of the plant you're more than likely to be told "It's a cactus" or "It's a fuschia" Not a lot of help.

Some of you may be interested in my first encounter of 'root rot' urrgh! I'd bought a gymnocalycium in bud (my friend identified this for me). For two weeks their it was flowering away. I'd carefully repotted it and for a few days it seemed to be fine until I noticed that it had gone very soggy from the crown to half way down one side. Ooh I thought what's happening here? Out came my friends book that he'd lent me and it told me ROOT ROT! It also gave some info on what I could try. The following morning, there I was armed with a knife, a spoon, kitchen roll, cotton buds and a bottle of alchohol. I cut in, round and scooped out gunge cleaning the utensils with alchohol as I went and then cut a little into healthy tissue making sure that I left as much of the crown and core as possible, and finally wiped the cavity out with alchohol and left what was left of the cactus to callus over. It survived and over the following few months the gaping cave that I'd created became a yawn which slowly shrunk to a smile. Now about two weeks ago I found that all the lower areoles are giving birth to babies at quite a rate. I suppose this is what you could call beginners luck.

I would like to ask for some identification help. How do you differentiate between a cephalocereus senilis and a long haired epostoa?

Look forward to any help and I feel sure someone will want to reprimand me on my DIY surgery.

Sue

[Phil_SK]

Hello and welcome!

I've moved this into the "introduce yourself" forum and left your Cephalocereus senilis/Espostoa question in main discussion forum.

Phil

[anders]

Hi Sue,

Is the next step to root the Gymnocalycium offsets? More fun than surgery.

(BTW, I don't think it was root rot, if so the plant would have rotted from the base and probably been dead now. This was the type that starts as a spot on the skin, often close to the top).

[AnTTun]

I'd describe difference between espostoa and cephalocereus this way: espostoa has combed hair, and cephalocereus usually has hair like crazy scientist

Seriously.. I suggest to take a look at any website that has pics of plants (cactus art and others) and you will see significant difference between the two of them.

[sathopol]

Hi Anders

I made a mistake, when I said root rot I meant stem rot. Yes your right, it did start at the crown.

I'm new to cacti and so am a little uncertain regarding removing the 'babies' I'm also thinking of maybe leaving it to nature and see what happens.

[sathopol]

Thanks AnTTun

[Liz M]

If your Gymnocalycium is still alive have you got it in compost yet? If it has callused over that is the time to get it into some good gritty compost, preferably sterilised (in a microwave or oven ), with little or no peaty material. Put it on the top of the compost put some grit or gravel around it and leave it to root up. Others here are more expert than me and will have more advice.

[sathopol]

Hello Liz
Thanks for your reply.
The Gymno is very alive amazingly enough. I cut a lot of flesh out of it at the time, think it was in May. Upto a few weeks ago it just sat there and then I noticed a little baby growing out of an areole on the lowest row.since then every areole on that row has produced a minature gymno. Funnily enough, when I operated on the 'mother' I removed some tiny plantlets growing around the base. The protuding babies are actually bigger than these. Must be the climate. It's in the 30s here now and very humid.
What I'm not sure about is how to remove the babies without killing them.

[Liz M]

Hi Sue, Leave the babies or pups, where they are. If you have a live plant, don't disturb it but try to root it. If you take the pups off, you will have to root those anyway, so just try to root the main plant.

[sathopol]

Hi Liz.

Think you missunderstood my original post, but then reading back i didn't make it clear, lol. I still wasn't clear on my last post.
The 'mother' gymno has always been rooted. When I said that it just sat there, I meant in its pot. I just left it to nature, watering along with my other cacti.

Sue