"Christmas Cactus" Blooms, Care and Identification

November is the time of year we start to complain about how early Christmas music and decorations show up all around us. In the indoor garden it is the time when gardener's thoughts turn to Christmas & "Thanksgiving Cactus" blooms, or why your Holiday Cactus is not blooming. If your "Christmas Cactus" is setting buds or blooms right now, you may not have a true "Christmas Cactus" at all. So, how do you know which of the Schlumbergera you're growing? How do you make your "Christmas Cactus" bloom? And Can you grow more plants from cuttings of your "Christmas Cactus?"

Thanksgiving Cactus Red Flower

The second flower on my Thanksgiving cacti is flowering. I'm really bad at describing colors outside of the primary colors, so this one will be called red. In reality it isn't very "red" but my color vocabulary leaves much to be desired and fails to adequately describe this "red" flower which looks like red satin fabric.

Not Your Grandma's Christmas Cactus

On a previous entry here I wrote about how to get your Christmas Cactus to flower and on my other blog I wrote an entry on rooting Christmas Cactus cuttings. In the first entry here I alluded to something being fishy in regards to calling my plants "Christmas Cacti." Most of the plants sold today as "Christmas Cactus" are actually not the true Christmas cactus. These are not your grandma's Christmas cactus.

Christmas comes earlier every year

Both of my Schlumbergias are in bloom now. I bought them last year at Walmart for a dollar after Christmas and they were in really bad shape. They even survived getting sprayed with Febreze that I mistook for a water bottle and have forgiven me by putting on a flower show. One is all white and the other has a red variegation to it.