The Inside Story

Day 222: Outside, my flower beds are blooming lavishly, but my houseplants are telling an inside story. Huernia zebrina (Lifesaver Plant, center) is putting on a stellar show, one star already gone nova and several hovering at the event horizon of a botanical Big Bang. The ... for the moment, let's just call them "Easter cacti," shall we? ... have a profusion of buds and flowers in various stages of development. This brings us now to the rabbit hole of taxonomy, and down we go.

Once upon a time, there was a genus called Schlumbergera. It belonged to the tribe of Rhipsalideae, and its extended numbers included a wide variety of leaf and flower forms. All members of the tribe were more or less epiphytic, which is to say that they liked to grow on trees or rocks, rather than having their roots directly in soil. During the late 1800s, the differences in form led to the creation of a second genus (Zygocactus), into which many of the Schlumbergeras were reassigned. Those which bloomed at Christmas were called Zygocactus; those blooming at Easter remained Schlumbergera. In the mid-1950s, the two genera were recombined, but the name Zygocactus had come into popular use and remains a common name for the Christmas-flowering species to this day (emphasis: I said "common name"). Now enter Hatiora, and another subject of much debate. According to some botanists, Hatiora deserves a unique genus. Others protest that it should remain among the Rhipsalideae.

If I were to make a list of taxonomic synonyms for Christmas/Easter/Hatiora cacti, it would probably achieve critical mass and cause a meltdown. Suffice to say that the different flower forms of the winter vs. spring bloomers supplies me with visual justification for calling Christmas cacti by their common name Zygocactus or scientific name Schlumbergera (not shown), Easter cacti by either Schlumbergera or Rhipsalidopsis as the mood suits me ("Scorpius" shown left), and delicate Hatiora rosea (right, optionally Rhipsalidopsis) by "Hattie," just because she's cute.