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Amazing Plants: My Christmas Cactus is Blooming…NOW!
I’ll tell you why in this post!
As a lifelong gardener, I’ve collected many houseplants over the years. One of my favorites is the Schlumbergera, commonly known as the Christmas or Holiday Cactus.
My mom has probably a dozen of these scattered on her screen porch, she has enough that they bloom in several different colors. My maternal grandmother had these beautiful plants too. I must come by liking them naturally, then, right?!
Not so fast. I think I really began to like the holiday cacti when I decided to teach a garden club unit on holiday plants. My students, 7–11 years of age, enjoyed it so much, I taught that unit for the next 14 years! As always before I taught, I did a lot of research. The Schlumbergera is a very interesting plant! And, I think that’s when my love for them really started.
Firstly, this is a plant that lives natively in the Brazilian Rainforest, high in the canopy. It is an epiphytic plant which means it grows on other plants, mostly trees, for support. It does not have to be “in the soil” or terrestrial to grow and thrive. This broad group of plants, epiphytes, have adapted to be able to catch nutrients and water by absorbing them from the air! The plant also lives in the canopy of the rainforest so as to be able to get enough light…
