Yellow Leader

Day 29: "This is Yellow Leader. Buds up! Stamens out! We're going into bloom!"

Yellow Zygocactus invariably starts the holidays a little earlier than his companions, although White won't be far behind. Picotee's largest bud isn't quite pea-sized yet, so it will be a few weeks before she puts on a show. The standards are lagging way behind, perhaps feeling a little like they've already been upstaged by the first contestants.

Yellow is not as hard to find these days as it was when I got my first one about thirty years ago. This specimen is a slip from the original. Zygos tend to take over your plant shelf, so I pinch mine regularly and rotate the older plants out into new homes. I prefer to have more varieties in smaller pots than one or two sprangly monsters taking up most of the available space. Not only are they more manageable, having more varieties assures me of a consecutive run of colourful blooms.