Night Blooming Cereus

Help! How do I get my night blooming cereus to bloom? Have one in both AR and FL. Heard one lady has waited 30 years for hers to bloom. I'm 74 and don't have 30 years to wait.

Hi Jean,

Welcome to DG! You might have better luck if you post your question in the beginner gardening forum. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/b_gardentalk/all/ This forum is for questions relating to the Plant Files database itself, so for questions on what to do about specific plants more people will see your question over there.

Hello Jean K. In my experience the night bloomers seem to be stimulated into bloom by daylength. If there is not an artificial light to interrupt the night and day length cycle the plant will bloom naturally. Mine bloom in summer, (after being planted only one year). Give them something to climb on. Stems that are well supported seem to bloom best.

For what it's worth, I was also told it would take 20-30 years to bloom and hadn't a clue whether I would be around then either. I received a few cuttings of this plant as a gift. At the time I wasn't particularly into anything tropical other than orchids but I graciously accepted the cuttings because they were from another DG subscriber's Mom's Mom who had evidently been passing around pieces of the plant for decades. At the time I was given two snippings that were two segments long each. I was told it was called Christ In A Manger and when I came home I began looking it up and found Christ In A Manger to be the common name for Peniocereus greggii. Another common name for P. greggii is Night Blooming Cereus. You and me have the same plant, lucky us... now if they'll just bloom for their mommas! I was originally told to just pot it in anything and to keep it in low light and that watering it when ever I remembered to water it would be fine.

Here are my thoughts so far on this plant that I have now had for 2 years that is finally taking off:
It's a species of the desert. That means it can withstand intense fluctuations in temps between night and day. Keeping it at room temperature of 70° day in and day out might not have been the best for my cuttings. It also is actually a high light plant not a low light plant. I moved my cuttings some time last year to a location in front of a window in a room that we don't use and added supplemental lighting. The extra gooseneck lighting fixture (regular bulb) combined with the house temps at 70° brought the day time temps up into the 80's for that plant and at night the temps in that room were allowed to drop to the 60's. Not exactly desert conditions but within about a few weeks, the plant starting taking off like gang busters. It was finally growing because it liked its new "digs". It was beginning to get gangly from rapid growth so I started snipping off segments to create more cuttings for the same pot. So far so good although it hasn't bloomed. This tells me that this plant might respond to higher levels of light and fluctuating temps so maybe you have some room in your home where you could do like I did and shut down heating ducts?

I'm told that if it likes where it is growing that it should bloom a heck of a lot sooner than 20-30 years and that those might have been for an actual plant growing in the Sonoran Desert. It supposedly only flowers in the middle of the night and is only open for a few hours and that it only flowers once in a blue moon and the flower lasts no longer than a few nights unless it is pollinated by a moth or a bat then it's done blooming and ceases to exist. So there, if you ever spot a bloom on your plant, be prepared to pull a few all nighters to catch it in flower and keep all bats and moths away from it because that will be the end of any flower as soon as the plant is pollinated :)

I've been meaning to check up on a fertilizer for this plant. Keep forgetting to do that so if anyone has a suggestion, I'd be interested in hearing what you think my baby might like.

If you would like, I can post photos of my plant for you but it's not much to look at other than an octopusy looking plant right now. It still hasn't bloomed for me but with changes to its growing conditions as well as the possibility of a fertilizer somewhere down the road, I now suspect I might actually live to see it bloom. Still waiting for buds but I'm not holding my breath.

I just found a great thread with oodles of information right here-
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/364655/

Looks as if I hit on something with the temps.