Please help me if you can. I would love to know what kind of cactus this is. I have had it for 4 years. I brought it home from Florida and I live in upstate New York. It grows rapidly, but it odd ways such as in spirals. I thought that this shoot (flowering) was just another branch of the cactus, until it bloomed one night. It fugures the only night it ever bloomed I was too rushed to be able to smell it. Please let me know what you know or where to find out. Thank you so very, very much. I have added more pictures. The one on the far right is a picture of the plant that flowered and one of its babies next to it. You can see the branch forming that turned into the flower. Thank you all for your help. I really hope i can get it to flower again this year. Thanks so much.
Princess, does this plant actually have thorns? I can't be certain if this is a cactus or a jungle cactus which is very different. If there are sharp thorns, likely the former. If the areas that appear to be "thorns" are soft it may be a member of the Epiphyllum family which contains night blooming jungle plants that are related to the cactus that grow in the desert. This is the family I believe Ron B may be referring to, commonly called Cereus species. Many are found in Central America as well as South America and some produce flowers very similar to your photograph.
This is a cactus with many very sharp thorns. The difference is that when it grows new branches they are off of the sides directly above the bunch of thorns. (Thorns are in bunches of 8 - 10 thorns in each bunch and the thorns range in length.) The new branches start very small and fuzzy looking and grow rapidly and sometimes they fall off, sometimes I cut them and make new plants. The new branches (is that the right word?) start very small and usually spiral, then after a few inches of that (as big around as a dime to a nickel) they become a bigger piece that is about as big as the original adult plant - which was only a piece of a very large cactus in someones yard in Florida. It has many new sprouts already that started at the end of January. The man that gave me the original piece of cactus said that I could plant it in the ground and treat it like a rose bush (covering with straw) and it would survive our harsh winters here in upstate new york, but I have been too nervous to do so. That is all of the information I got from him about the plant. I'm just hoping it will flower again this year so I smell the flower. Also, the part of the cactus that was the flower looked exactly like a regular branch growing until it formed a bud at the end. Thank you so much, please respond. Cindy
Obviously not a "Cereus" then as I've seen the name used for jungle cactus. You'll need to seek advice from someone who knows their desert cactus, and that is something I know almost zero about!
No, I was saying it could be any cactus of the cereus type - not just an Epiphyllum (which is a genus and not a family) - which wouldn't be my first guess anyway as there is a tendency for these to have flattened stems. Also don't see how the spines rule out the cereus group, seems most of these have them. On the familiar Cereus undatus (Hylocereus undatus), for instance, these can be quite firm and assertive. Yours may be lurking somewhere on a site like this. Look at all the links to different relevant genera at the bottom of the page! http://www.columnar-cacti.org/cereus/
Acanthocereus tetragonus. Its a weedy sprawling species native to Florida and much of the New World tropics.
