Blooming cactus - recovering Lobivia Wrightiana

I am quite surprised I didn't kill it yet. It was showing all signs of bad care and I just had no clue what should I change.
As with many cacti (and you will see it in other examples in future posts) I didnt water it enough as I thought if I do, it will rot. This one has a tap root (like a carrot) that stores water and is more prone to rotting when the soil stays wet too long. It is doing good now :)

Lobivia Wrightiana

It is native to Bolivia and as many (of not every) cactus it needs cooler and dry winter rest to bloom in spring.


Hooman wait.. must check the pot!





Can I continue?
Not yet. The green thing must check too.

You can continue now Hooman, but I will be watching ya!

It is still just one flower this year, but the plant is looking better and hopefully next year there will be more. The colour the just amazing!

The previous blooming and the size of the plant:

2019	2021

You can see the different colour on the 2019 image. It is normal for the to change colour like that due to stress, but I don't think it should have been so stressed. I think I was heavily underwatering it. It was the first year the cactus was growing in the clay pot.

In 2021 it looked better, but still growing quite slow and even though bigger, it had just one flower.
After it was done blooming I took it out from that clay and potted it in a plastic, square pot (and I am slowly moving all the cacti to the square ones). I could see that it was a very good change soon after. It started to grow faster and greener.

You can see that the green top looks so much better than the scarred and dehydrated bottom. It doesn't hide in the soil anymore as it sometimes used to when it was in clay. They like to shrink and pull themselves deeper in the ground. Another mechanism to prevent overheating and loss of water.


This is how the top looked like last year - full of scars. Now it is under the fresh and green top. The nice, green part is also one year worth of growth.





This year:

We are done puss... you are dismissed.

My other blooming cacti:

Chamaecereus hybrid	Sulcorebutia Canigueralii	Mammillaria camptotricha	Mammillaria Glassii
Gymnocalycium baldianum	Mediolobivia mudanensis	Lobivia Arachnacantha	Rebutia hybrid
Mammillaria Bombycina	Mammillaria Gracilis Snowcap	Mammillaria haageana	Mammillaria backebergiana
Chamaecereus silvestrii	Mammillaria prolifera	Rebutia Fabrisii var. Aureiflora	Lobivia Wrightiana
Aylostera Flavistyla FR756	Parodia concinna	Mammillaria Copper King	Gymnocalycium Bruchii
Mammillaria backebergiana	Gymnocalycium damsii	Echinopsis subdenudata	Rhipsalis pilocarpa
Mammillaria Prolifera	Lobivia arachnacantha v. vallegrandensis	Mediolobivia atrovirens	Mammillaria magnimamma
Sulcorebutia langerii	Sulcorebutia frankiana	Chamaelobivia no ID	Rebutia Albiflora
Mediolobivia atrovirens var. ritteri	Gymnocalycium damsii var. tucavocense	Notocactus Ottonis	Gymnocalycium Friedrichii
Turbinicarpus Viereckii	Rebutia neocumingii	Notocactus Rubrigemmatus	Lobivia no ID
Sulcorebutia albissima	Lobivia arachnacantha II	Notocactus mueller-melchersii	Mammillaria Prolifera
Aylostera heliosa var. condorensis	Frailea pumila	Lobivia arachnacantha	Lobivia no ID