Night-blooming Cereus, Queen of the Night, Dutchman's Pipe Cactus (Epiphyllum ox

Night-blooming Cereus, Queen of the Night, Dutchman's Pipe Cactus
Epiphyllum oxypetalum

Third flush of the season.

I think I've received a cutting from this plant. It looks the same, but not sure. Anyway, does it need staking? How is the watering? dry side, moist, wet??? Lighting? direct sun? filtered? When will it bloom? Guess I have many questions, any help you can offer will be most appreciated.

Oh Candy that's beautiful! I was thinking about your gorgeous garden since I began renting my house recently (no more apts yaay!) and how you've set up your container garden. I have been trying to think about how you set yours up...I wish mine would look a quarter as good as yours.

Floridagardner- I have mine in morning sun and it get's watered 2-3 times a week and it's never done better since I put it in so much sun. I would be careful with your until the cutting for sure roots and starts sending out new shoots. I'm about to have to stake mine, but I've had it for about 2 years and this is the first it's needed it. Anyhow, clearly Happenstance is way better with this plant so I'll let her answer the questions for real!!

In any case, this is the most rewarding plant. When it does bloom they are to die for. The smell, the way they look and how fleeting the bloom is. It's definitely on my top 5 favorite plants:) Good luck with it!

I have to admit that I did NOT stay up most of the night for this third flush of the season. :-)

They are beautiful flowers, but their timing is really really bad. Something about "Early to bed, early to rise" comes to mind for me. We had an early & long day at the building site for the new house today, so I opted for a solid night's sleep. I did get up early enough to catch some of them open. Three opened Monday night and six or seven last night. My guess is there will be another half dozen tonight before this showoff shuts down for the season.

Not the best shot, but it was early and I had that early morning soooo cranky thing going!

And a single bloom.

Thanks for the nice compliments, I appreciate it.....but if you could see the disaster my garden is, as we prepare to move in a couple of weeks......not a pretty or well tended sight. Lots of cuttings growing in odd places and plants that don't go together.....just hoping we can get moving so I can get most things moved before it turns wet and cold.

Depending on how you are growing and feeding your E. oxy, I would guess that by the second season you would want to start training it on some sort of trellis or stakes of some sort. I have a small 4' high x 12" wide metal trellis in the pot that I've tied some of the tall leaves to. It seems to be working well, but the plant will have out grown it by the end of this season. The flowers bloom on older growth which initially wants to drag on the ground, so staking them will also help get the blooms closer to eye level. I'll be trying something more permanent once we've moved.

Watering - depending on weather conditions I water almost every day. We generally never have rain from April until November, with average daytime temps 85-110F and very little humidity. This summer has been very hot, with a month of temps in excess of 100F. As long as you have a fast draining soil mixture, it is unlikely that they will be overwatered in our zone. They really aren't picky about water........but will slow down growth rates with less water. I use diluted fish emulsion as the main source of fertilizer, but will give them a shower of whatever foliar feed I happen to be using at any given time.

These get morning sun partially filtered by a 10' Brugmansia tree and lots of reflected light the rest of the day. Several of the leaves got burned during one of our heat waves because it was pushed too close to the glass slider. Doesn't kill the plant, just makes a scarred area that is unsightly. Those fronds can be cut off and stuck in the soil if you can't stand the look of some damage to leaves from inattention or neglect. :-)

This particular plant and another are in their third season. They were 5-8" cuttings the summer of 2004. They spent the witner in the greenhouse and were transplanted last year into large containers. Blooming can be a fickle situation.....these bloomed in their second season, but I have another the same age that has yet to bloom.

As far as setting up container gardens.....I do the grouping thing, which usually by summer's end needs some rearranging because I tend to block paths and access to areas of the garden. The trick to my succulent collection is three tiered metal racks. When you get so many pots, it just seems impossible to arrange them appropriately without some sort of structured way of using available space. Somewhere in an old thread I remember posting a picture of the metal racks, but I sure can't find it right now.

This message was edited Sep 6, 2006 8:27 PM

Thanks for the helpful replies. Glad to know that it can be staked as I've already put some small stakes in stratgic places. I'm looking forward to raising a healthy, happy plant. Hopefully soon you'll see a picture of one beautiful plant. Thank you.

To Happenstance:

So it looks like you let your night blooming cereus grow and grow unrestricted. I was hoping to find someone who pruned theirs and find out how they did it. I get these long, long cylindrical stems that can get 5-6 feet long. What does one do with those?

YOUR EPIPHYLLUM IS BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE HAD ONE FOR 34 YEARS AND I CAN'T GET IT TO FLOWER. I NEED HELP. I GOT IT FROM MY FATHER-IN-LAW WHEN I WENT TO PANAMA ON VACATION.

Some awesome epi oxy's here!

I had a beautiful epiphyllum oxypetalum given to me in '96 when it was a mature plant. It loved La Jolla, California when I lived there. The arms grew over 6 feet out like angel wings and it bloomed regularly.

I regret my oxy suffered moves and trims before it finally gave up when we had a 10 day frost in Northern California (even in a flower house) last year and it got too wet/cold before I realized what was happening. I wish I'd brought it indoors! I still water it's remains once in a while in the hope it will come back to life. I can't bear to toss the whole thing thinking it may ...

If only I had known then what I know now about this gem. I have green thumbs and fingers and toes. I'm a plant mother. So, I have researched the epi Queen's care over and over and now feel much more equipped to do it justice. Live and learn (:

To the point ~ If possible, I would like to find a replacement oxy (Queen of the Night/Night Blooming Cereus/Dutchman's Pipe) without having to wait two years for a cutting to mature. I see there are a few places online where 4.5" pots are sold but that's pretty small and they have to travel to California from Texas or the East Coast.

That said, I also see here someone had a huge plant and blooms from a year old cutting.

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks!

This is not the kind of advice you are asking for>>>>>

This is about enjoying the bloom and still getting to bed at a decent time. We didn't get it moved here with us but when we had it, we thought of putting it to bed early!!!
Had a bathroom with no window and put the flowerpot in there in the early evening.
It must have a light meter instead of a clock.

Hello Happenstance! Your plant and the blooms are incredible! I fell so in love with images of this flower that I've become dedicated to trying to grow it. I bought 2 plants and they are lovely, but they turned out not to be the Queen. After 2 years they bloomed and had the same looking flower in pink, but very small. I've bought 4 more plants, growing for 2+ years now and I have the first bud. It seems very tiny and unlikely to be a Queen, but we will see. This photo is about day 9. Can you tell me how long it tends to be from bud to bloom?

Also, your plant appears to bloom from the end of the leaves. Mine is budding from the side. Do you know if this is a different plant than yours?

Hello Happenstance! Your plant and the blooms are incredible! I fell so in love with images of this flower that I've become dedicated to trying to grow it. I bought 2 plants and they are lovely, but they turned out not to be the Queen. After 2 years they bloomed and had the same looking flower in pink, but very small. I've bought 4 more plants, growing for 2+ years now and I have the first bud. It seems very tiny and unlikely to be a Queen, but we will see. This photo is about day 9. Can you tell me how long it tends to be from bud to bloom?

Also, your plant appears to bloom from the end of the leaves. Mine is budding from the side. Do you know if this is a different plant than yours?