JB: Your house must be beautiful this Thanksgiving with so many stunning blooms! Great growing!

I only have 3 Schlumbergera x buckleyi and all have buds now ... I'm hoping the blooms will show themselves in another week or two! These two are on the back porch:

Plantladylin-- those are nice S. truncatas! What color are they?

Everyone's blooms are so pretty. Only one of mine is flowering right now. No sign of buds on the other ones

This is my big one from December last year, it doesn't have many buds yet this year at all:


And, a bloom from another one, also from a year ago :

It's been raining here ahead of a cold front making it's way south to Florida so I went out on the screened porch to move a stand with orchids and got a couple of photo's of holiday cactus that I found in bud; even a small pot of cuttings have budded up:

Lin your plants are beautiful. Forgive me for being tardy in my posts but this is our busy time here on the Christmas Tree Farm and I am alone here during the week since we are not really open but people stop in anyhow. I just forced myself to sit down and have some lunch and look at the posts. I have some new pics i took this morning while tending the plants. I will post them as soon as I have a second.

I decided to do it right now. I am tired and need to rest anyhow. Good excuse to play a few more minutes.
The first is a little cutting that fell off one of my many plants and was rooted. This is what it looks like today and I do not remember ever seeing one with so many buds at the tips before. Have you ever seen this many buds on a TC before?



This is Zygocactus x Xmas Flame



This pretty lady is Zygocactus x Malindi



Here is S. Cristen



These are a pot full of Red cuttings a friend sent me. They are starting to bloom. No name.



Last for today, is Ole Yellow



Enjoy and Have a good one. Stay safe if you are in the path of this Nor'easter.

JB: Wow, such beautiful blooms! I've never seen so many buds on one stem before ... you have the touch! I really love the S. Cristen; for some reason I'm always drawn more to that color of blooms on the Holiday Cactus but I really love that Ole Yellow a lot; I've never seen one that color before and it is gorgeous!

Lin, JB-- gorgeous plants! I usually only see buds like that on ones that are sprayed, so you've done well!

Starting Saturday we're going to have a week or so (at least Saturday through Thursday in the Forecast!) of frost-free temps. I'll take another look around at HD and see if any TC came in. I hate making them suffer in the cold if i get them when it's freezing outside!

I am about to stop shipping if this weather keeps up. I hate doing it and taking a chance on it killing plants it took me so long to grow. Not worth it to me. I do not need the money and I do not like killing plants.

Julianna: Sprayed? With what?

I'm in Florida and we are supposed to be down to 38ºF Thursday morning! Wow, that is so cold for this time of year! We usually don't get temp's in the thirties until late December or early January. I still have lots of plants blooming and they sure aren't going to be happy.

There's 'frozen stuff' in various forms coming from the sky so close to us this morning, luckily about 40 here @ the moment. Supposed to be a hard freeze tonight, 24!!!! Yowza!

It's downright gloomy outside, the window is all wet from the cold. Just took this pic. No sunrise again today.

Enjoy your weather. I just got hit with 6 inches of snow and it's suppose to drop down in the twenty's. There were about 50 accidents in our county. I don't think no one too serious. South and East of us was way worse. And now along Lake Erie towards New York.

JB--I hear you! Are you guys getting the warm front though next week? I'm looking forward to the non-freezing temps that weather.com claims we're going to have for 7 days so far-- lows in the 40s!

Plantladylin-- there is a bloom inducing spray commercial growers will use for schlums to induce more blooming.

Purple-- 24? YUCK.

Stush-- oh my! I hate snow. I learned to drive in rain for the first time when I went to college. Then snow when I worked for a bit in IN. I still don't like either one lol.

Yeah, 24 - Farenheit! How can it be 15 degrees colder here than in AR? I really am going to whine! (Hear Varouca Salt! "Eeeeeeye want some heat nooowwww! Give it to me or I'll scream!")

Driving in snow is no problem, (I'm from OH.) it's just hard to dodge the folks trying to kill ya! Snow day off school? I was headed to the ski slope! Ahhh the good ol' days before snowboards were invented (another device of attempted murders!)

Oh, I made it a point to check Monday. L's & WM's TCs were both labeled CCs (and said Zygocactus.) No wonder people are confused.

This pot is coming along well.

That's the kind of TC you gave me I think-- my buds are the same color!

Well I think we're the same temp at the moment. We're in the 20s at night too this whole week.

Zygocactus and Schlumbergera are one and the same. It really depends on where the plant came from. Some people still call them Zygocactus and others call them Schlumbergera. I am sure you know that, I am sorry if I am repeating something already known.

One of my reference articles from The Cactus Collection states, "The word Zygocactus is often used to refer to this plant, but merely describes the manner in which the joints are connected and is of no taxonomical importance. Zygocactus are actually Schlumbergera hybrids (correct botanical name) between Schlumbergera truncatus and Schlumbergera bridgesli, and are also known as Schlumbergera x buckleyii" NOW ARE YOU REALLY CONFUSED?

Have a good evening. I am going to bed.

No, I wasn't confused, but thanks for that. Zygocatus is the former genus name for what we now call 'true Christmas cactus, Schlumbergera x buckleyi. The irony is putting this long-abandoned name/label on Thanksgiving cacti, Schlumbergera truncata.

Paul Brunelle, a highly respected cacti and succulent horticulturist, states:
"The true "Christmas Cactus" is Schlumbergera x buckleyi, a hybrid between S. russelliana and S. truncata produced in the late 1840s by William Buckley at the Rollisson Nurseries in England. There are possibly two, perhaps three slightly different surviving clones (vegetative descendants created through layering or cuttings) of three hybrids of this cross, named S. x buckleyi 'Buckleyi ' , S. x buckleyi 'Rollissonii', and possibly S. x buckley 'Snowii'. 'Rollissonii', has flowers magenta in colour, 'Buckleyi', with white tube shading to magenta petals, and 'Snowii', with smaller magenta flowers and stem segments. The name Schlumbergera bridgesii, still seen occasionally, was mistakenly published for it very early, and only in 1964 was the plant's proper history and correct designation traced and reestablished by Will Tjaden, a member of the Epiphytic Plant Study Group in England.[1]

I need to get some batteries, STAT. I have a bud opening!