Today is Christmas Eve, and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas tomorrow. This plant seems to always know when its that time of the holidays, I guess that is where it got its name from. Besides Night Blooming Cereus these are the only cactus I keep indoors, they are at least 5 or so years old and are now producing alot of flowers. Each plant has a dozen or more opening around this time of the year.
 Camera Model | Lumix GH3 |
|---|---|
 Lens | Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm Macro lens |
 Filter | none |
 Aperture | f/3.5 |
 Shutter Speed | 1/250 sec |
 Film Speed | 200 |
 Spectrum | Visual Light |
 Wavelength | 380 through 700 nanometers |
 Location | North Georgia USA. |
I have three of these plants, one of them is producing more of an orange/red flower.
The leaves of the cactus, if thats what you can even call them. Have new buds forming, maybe more flowers are on the way.
Stepping back we can see how many flowers are bunched around the cactus.
Some have already been open for a week, others are just starting the bloom.
I love how two of my Christmas cactus have dual colors going on. One white with pink outlines and the other is more of a blaze orange.
The stamens of the flower hang far down and have a fuschia like color to the end of them.
Stepping back we can see how small they are, they look alot bigger when I get close with my macro lens.
These plants can only live indoors around where I live, without protection the frosts would completely kill them.
Luckily we have found a good window spot for them, previous they had a different window spot but was getting too much light causing burns on the cactus. So I moved them to a slightly less sunny spot and now they are very happy.
I wonder how long the buds will open for, looks like I will get them into January.
The pink outlines of this white flower can be seen. Right along the edges of the flower petals the color changes.
Looking at the blaze orange colored flowers they are quite impressive as well. But these have not fully opened just yet.
Comparing the blaze orange flowers to my one other Christmas cactus the colors are different.. This one has more red in it. We can also see a little flower node to the left.
The white flowers seemed to have opened first.
But there are a couple fully opened orange ones too.. Not sure which flower I like more. They are both quite pretty.
Taking a close up look of the stamens it looks quite fuzzy.
Pollen can be seen as well, but these will not get any pollinators since they are indoors. And outdoors the bugs are pretty much done for the year.
I love how the light passes through the petals, gives it a glowing appearance.
One of the shots with the stamens and the petals in the background.
There are three kinds of these holiday blooming cactus. A Thanksgiving variety, Christmas variety and an Easter variety. I believe these are Christmas or maybe the Thanksgiving variety.
More details on this plant below: