botanicaladventures:

2017 12 08, these are the schlumbergera at my parents…the first one has kind of symmetrical flowers…the second one is asymmetric. i will really give up on giving and id… i wanted to make better pictures but did not want to move the plants to prevent bud drop. the next time i post about christmas cacti will be when the one i have will go into full bloom…one or two weeks. 

Schlumbergera truncata blood runs through its veins! I actually have a pink flowered one that looks almost the same. The key is not to ID through flowers that are just opening or wilting/fading, but rather ones in the middle of their full floral prime, showing every petal curl they naturally possess. I think I vaguely remember someone saying that if the flower looks like a shrimp then it’s a S. truncata (that or that was my own observations of seeing various S. truncata cultivars, icr <A<).

botanicaladventures:

kihaku-gato:

botanicaladventures:

schlumbergera russelliana started blooming. one early bird, but many more small buds. 

I was gonna suggest that it’s more likely Schlumbergera x buckleyi, but just realized that while they are different plants they look virtually identical to each other (explanation being that S. russelliana is a parent to S. x buckleyi, it’s other parent being S. truncata, however it takes more after it’s S. russelliana parent for most visual charactersitics).

This really makes me wonder how one can tell the two apart, or it it would require genetic testing to even be able to be sure if it was one or the other.

nah, i was just lazy getting into details…so i really cannot tell them apart. i was just naming it after the visual characteristics, and it looked more like russelliana. My dream is a catalogue of all the original schlumbergera species and their crossbreedings and cultivars with high quality photos of flowers and whole plants complete with family tree and whatnot…

There is supposedly a book on Schlumbergeras, but last I had checked it was for the most part out of print oTL I agree a family tree of the family/hybrids etc. would be lovelyyy

botanicaladventures:

schlumbergera russelliana started blooming. one early bird, but many more small buds. 

I was gonna suggest that it’s more likely Schlumbergera x buckleyi, but just realized that while they are different plants they look virtually identical to each other (explanation being that S. russelliana is a parent to S. x buckleyi, it’s other parent being S. truncata, however it takes more after it’s S. russelliana parent for most visual charactersitics).

This really makes me wonder how one can tell the two apart, or it it would require genetic testing to even be able to be sure if it was one or the other.