Ah, the Christmas cactus. Perhaps you received one of these as a holiday gift, wrapped with a red ribbon or nestled in a festive planter. Maybe you forgot about it, sitting on your mantle, after the holiday frenzy.
And yet, to your surprise, your neglect failed to do it in. So you began a watering routine, and it became one of your cherished houseplants.
Christmas cacti are fairly hardy as far as houseplants go. But they do require special conditions to coax out their blooms every year.
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Sometimes called zygocactus or holiday cactus, this houseplant typically blooms just in time for the end of year holidays.
I’ll cover everything you need to know about growing and caring for this winter-blooming succulent plant.
Cultivation and HistoryYou might be wondering if this pretty succulent is actually a cactus, and the short answer is – yes!
However, this houseplant originates from a tropical environment rather than a dry desert, so its care is a bit different than what you may be familiar with for other types of cacti. We’ll get to that a little later.
In addition to being members of the cactus family, Christmas cacti are also epiphytes, meaning they don’t naturally grow in soil, but rather in shallow organic debris found on rocks or in the crevices of tree trunks.
The plants in the Schlumbergera genus are all native to the coastal mountains of southeast Brazil, and grow in tropical rain forests where they are pollinated by hummingbirds.
Like other types of cacti, Christmas cacti don’t grow leaves; instead, they have jointed stems made up of flattened segments called
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