BCSS - Forum

I love the offsets on this plant, which is itself an offset of an ancient cactus inherited with a previous house twenty years ago. Echinopsis oxygona I think. That is what I call it; I like all plants to be named if possible.

Afraid to even attempt to repot. Presumably the yellow offsets must never be detached from the parent? It would be interesting to see other such oddities. No I am not referring to the yellow flowering ones in yellow pots.

I would have no hesitation in removing the offsets. Their pale colour could be due to lack of nutrients from the parent plant which is possibly struggling a bit. You can leave the offsets on or take them off but I would either repot into fresh compost or put the plant on a modest fertiliser regime.

The plants on either side of the cat look very healthy .

Strange they look like chlorophyll deficient sports? If so they would not be able to grow on their own roots and need the chlorophyll of the mother plant to survive. The puzzling part is you would not expect to get three heads chlorophyll deficient unless they are all coming from a single original offset or a chlorophyll deficient area on the plant such as a variegated part, but that is not obvious in the photograph.

You would need to unpot the plant and investigate further to see if they are attached or self sown seedlings, but if chlorophyll deficient I would not have expected seedlings to have survived that long. The chlorophyll deficient Red Lollypop Gymno was grafted when only as big as a match head or it would not have survived.

If they are attached to the plant you could remove one offset and see if it roots and produces normal chlorophyll or dies.

HI,

I am afraid that I disagree with Rod, as these offsets are obviously lacking chlorophyll, if they wern't there would be some sign of chlorophyll in the centre of the new shoots and there is none. So I would leave them in place, larger pot yes, which at the same time would give more nutrients. Should a shoot get knocked off when repotting then that shoot would have to be grafted to survive.

Good luck,

Suzanne

topsy wrote:HI,

I am afraid that I disagree with Rod...

Suzanne

No problem Suzanne. This is not an exact science. It does seem odd, if these are offsets, that they should all be chlorophyll deficient when the parent plant clearly isn't. Unless they are not offsets, as Dave has suggested.

Hi Brian
You could try to graft one offset

If you zoom in on the picture you can see roots between the offsets. Bigger pot, fresh soil and they might go green again.

The oddities are offsets and did not grow from seed. Yes Chris there are indeed roots, so I intend to depot sometime and see what I find. I suspect nothing unusual. More than likely I will put in a slightly bigger pot and keep in tact, to find out what happens.

Philippe ~ an interesting suggestion, I am not sure I have the courage to do grafting on my own. Maybe I should ask around at the branch and find somebody more adventurous.