Hattie

Day 211: Hattie is in bloom. It's hard to believe, but this plant is over forty years old. I was given a tiny slip (two or three sections) by a friend who cautioned me, "It's very difficult to bring into flower." A decade passed before I figured out what its requirements were. It took me longer than that to discover its true identity. The friend had not known its scientific name and simply called it her "miniature Christmas cactus. Since the friend was Swedish, I referred to it as my "Swedish Christmas cactus" for many years before identifying it as Hatiora rosea, hence the nickname Hattie. While it is a distant relative of Schlumbergera/Zygocactus, the segments are much smaller in size and the flower resembles that of orchid cacti. Some might describe the flower as "pink," but I would call it "pale magenta" for the blue note it contains, and it is an electric hue which seems to glow in almost any lighting situation. Hattie has bloomed for me almost every year since I determined that she needed to be kept in a cool room during the winter months and kept quite dry, even to the point of the segments beginning to wither. Forty years later, she still only fills a 4" pot.