Re: Can someone help me identify this cactus Looks like outdoor cactus which can grow tall and has round flower-coloured bulb at top when good care taken. Sorry I do not know proper name. Have seen this type, I believe, in photographs taken by husband's parents who winter each year in Lake Havasu City, Arizona which is desert mostly. They love all types of cactus and take lots of photos. The little I know personally is about the Christmas Cactus which is an indoor plant. Succulents (cacti) store water in their leaves so it is very important not to over-water. My Dutch father taught me to always check that the surface soil was dry to the touch and then water just to get the surface soil all wet.
Another (facetious) way to not over water your cactus is read the weather summary in your newspaper. When it says it has rained in El Paso, Texas, water your cactus.
It's a colored cactus mutant grafted onto the top of a normal green one. The mutant probably has no chlorophyll and cannot live without being connected to a normal one that does have chlorophyll. (Plants use chlorophyll to manufacture their own food).
Responding to your tongue-in-cheek method of not over-watering your cactus. Though it is amusing, weather is local or provincial up here in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. This is more than several hundred miles away from El Paso, Texas and we would not likely hear what is happening with the weather down in El Paso, Texas way up here. So I will stick with my Dad's recommendations about care of cactus. Thank you kindly for your reply.
I apologize that I am not at all familiar with any form of grafting one cactus onto another. Perhaps there is a cactus expert available to you locally, at a Gardening Centre -- or they might know of one to recommend. Likely you will get replies from the experts at the UBC Botanical Garden. Good Luck.
It is difficult to say, but looking through my Tropica (with it's limited number of pages with cactus photos), and trying to match the characteristics of your plant, it could be(number of flutes, vertical, not swirled, relatively few thorns running predominately horizontal to down per position), my most considered guess is that this cactus is a rather immature Cereus hexagonus or "blue columns" from Colombia. It has similarities to Lemaireocereus stellatus and Cephalocereus polylophus, but the poly has more flutes than I am comfortable with. I tried for ya'. Maybe this will head you in a good direction. Sorry I couldn't do more.
CecuilaE wrote: Chuck White's suggestion is not as far fetched as it seems on first look. One of the great things about the web is that you put a location into one of the weather pages and have it come up every time you go on line. :) Having said that, I think a watering schedule appropiate for any plant is the way to go. Mother Nature can be very fickle and might result in over- or under-watering. What did your Dad reccomend? Harry