RicRac Cactus
RicRac Cactus
Disocactus anguliger
❦ ❧ ❦
Difficulty — BeginnerThe RicRac is a creature of the rainforest canopy masquerading as a cactus — and a true cactus she is, though you will find no desert in her history. In the wild she clings to the limbs of jungle trees, her flattened green stems notched into the deep zigzag that earns her the names fishbone and ricrac. Treat her not as a prickly survivor of the sands but as the epiphyte she truly is, and come autumn she may reward you with enormous nocturnal blooms, fragrant and gone by morning.
Notes on Cultivation
☀Light
Bright, indirect light is her ideal, with perhaps a little gentle morning sun. She is no sun-worshipper like her desert cousins — harsh afternoon rays redden and scorch her flattened stems — yet too dim a spot leaves her lank, weak, and disinclined ever to flower.
❦Water
Here she parts ways entirely from the desert cacti. Keep her lightly moist through the growing season, letting only the top inch or two dry between drinks — never bake her bone-dry for months on end. Ease back through winter to a cooler, drier rest, which helps set the coming autumn's flowers, but never leave her standing in water.
☁Humidity
Being a jungle epiphyte, she relishes moisture in the air. Fifty percent or more keeps her stems supple and green; she will tolerate ordinary household air, but a more humid spot — or the close company of other plants — visibly pleases her.
✵Temperature
Warmth of 60 to 85 Fahrenheit suits her growing months. A cooler, drier spell in autumn, with nights near 50 to 60 Fahrenheit, is the very cue she waits for to form her buds. Keep her above 45 and well clear of frost.
❧Soil
She wants an airy, chunky epiphyte's mix — orchid bark, perlite, and a little coco coir loosened through ordinary potting soil. The blend must drain freely yet hold a whisper of moisture. Dense, heavy ground is the one thing she will not abide.
❀Fertilizing
A balanced feed, well diluted, monthly through the growing season keeps her vigorous. As summer wanes, a switch to a bloom-minded, phosphorus-leaning feed gently encourages those coveted autumn buds.
✿Propagation
She grows readily from a length of her own stem. Take a healthy segment, let the cut end callus over for several days in dry air, then settle it into a barely-damp, airy mix to root. Like her desert kin she resents the constant moisture of the clear Fluval Stratum cup and is apt to rot if kept too wet, so for her I set the signature method aside in favour of this drier, more patient start — though, being a softer-stemmed jungle plant, she roots rather more obligingly than the true desert cacti.
Field Observations
Her flowers are the stuff of patient reward: large, fragrant, and strictly nocturnal, opening on an autumn night and spent by the following day. They come only to mature, well-grown plants given that cool, dry autumn rest, so do not despair at a few flowerless years — the waiting is the price of the show.
She is a trailer by nature, built to spill from the branches she was born upon. Give her a hanging pot or a high shelf where those zigzag stems may cascade freely, and she will look far happier than ever she does crammed upright in a pot.
— faithfully recorded by Mr. Phileas Plant
