I mentioned in a previous post that my friend Keri from Animalbytes had joined us for our trip to the Southern California Spring Garden Show last week. She grows Epiphyllum in her garden and there were tons to look at at the show. This got me a little interested in, perhaps, growing some of my own. Keri has been kind enough to take some cuttings for me and I will be potting them up here in my garden very soon. I think that they will fit nicely either along our back wall or on the back patio, depending on the amount of sun they desire.
Here is an excerpt from Keri’s post about her epiphyllum over on her blog, Animalbytes.
[…]
I’ve successfully grown two variety of epiphyllum for years. The Sunset Western Garden Book gives the common name of “orchid cactus” for epiphyllum. Epiphyllums are a type of cactus with long flat stems that are scalloped along the edges and give the appearance of leaves. The few spines are at the base of these scallops.
These plants naturally come from the forests of Central and South America where rain is frequent. It is odd to think of forest cactus, but that is what these plants are. They have small shallow roots and typically settle into the nooks and crannies in trees and between rocks. Here in pockets of leaf litter, they thrive on rain water and nutrients washing off the surrounding plants.
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