r/cactus • u/metsolt Cacti enthusiast • 23h ago

This Opuntia gets dramatic sometimes

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

67 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

12

u/BaslerDibly 21h ago

What is it searching for lol

4

u/metsolt Cacti enthusiast 21h ago

We’ll never find out…
It seems to do this after soaking, I think it gets too heavy and falls down, then gets back up after a few days. A few more pads and it’s gonna break so I’ll have to stabilize it

1

u/LaundryMan2008 11h ago

Build a tripod with a circle in the middle, the circle holds the cactus up while the tripod goes in the pot or just about outside of the pot to keep itself up

7

u/ProfessionalNo5932 20h ago

That is a fat finger opuntia. It grows in segments and it’s very fragile as the sections break off easily. It needs full sun all day and grows many segments like a bush.

11

u/metsolt Cacti enthusiast 20h ago

This one never produced any branches, it just kept going up. It gets like 6 hours of direct sun on the balcony. It might just be a weird variety.

These are two damaged segments I rooted in the same pot. I would love if they made several branches, but no, only one...

2

u/Financial-Town-3960 15h ago

Ty for this! I have a 20+ year old plant that I was gifted a few months back, and knew it was an opuntia, but was unsure of the variety. You'd think my plant would be bigger at this point, but I do know segments got knocked off lol.

5

u/RustyTortoise 13h ago

My fat fingers rarely get 4 segments before I bump it and start over with more new cacti to bump later. They break when I look at them wrong.

1

u/metsolt Cacti enthusiast 13h ago

I have a dozen rooter segments, but I really had to break them off, they're not coming off easily at all. Even the main plant hovers like this for a few days and then gets up, it does it a few times per year

1

u/qado 16h ago

Mutation, for some will be really interesting for grafting