Peniocereus greggii transmontanus SNL1 (grafted)     6/28/19
I'm going to brag. I grafted some Peniocereus seedlings onto Harrisia bonplandii stock a few years ago, and here are flowers. Actually, there were two flowers, which I pollinated and the resulting two fruits are developing right now. The reason for the grafting is that the plant on its own roots develops an immense tuber below ground. Some books claim a weight of 125 lb (50 kilos) for the tuber. I never could keep the plant alive for many years after I collected the seeds and planted them. (This was my first cactus seed collection, when I was in grad school in Tucson AZ. That's why the "SNL1".) The brag is that I first made a grafted population of this species about 30 years ago, and I got the same result - flowers without the bother or nurturing a rot-prone tuber. I made lots of seeds over many years. I wound up giving the plants away because they got too big and too scraggly for my limited greenhouse space. The brag is that I've now done this trick twice. (Science lesson: if it happens once, there is no meaning. If it happens twice, a pattern has started.) My friend Steven Brack was impressed that I did it once. He hadn't heard of anyone successfully doing the grafting resulting in reliable flowering of this species. I'm surprised that the flowering period for my six grafts has extended from the date of the picture to the last flower, this morning (5 weeks later). I think that in nature the whole neighborhood blooms one night and is done. No straggling over five weeks.   (83/88)   

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