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No chlorophyll... what to do? (WARNING LARGE IMAGES)

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Hi I have had this cactus cutting for about two months and have been keeping it in my room until I can be bothered planting it :blush:

anyway I pulled it out Saturday only to my great surprise that it had pupped and grown but is lacking chlorophyll :wacko:

So I was hoping someone here can give me some advise as how i would go about planing it now? because I do not want it to get burned or worse die....

Thanks, Jwerta

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Edited by jwerta

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You could try slowly introducing it to stronger light over time, but if I was you I'd chop the new growth and start again.

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i had a posyt about this ages ago when i first joined. cut it off was the best option and replant the tips till only the very tip can be seen so it will grow normally

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Hi Jwerta

Hey yea I had the same thing a few months back. Had 2 cuttings in my garage. Looked pretty much the same as yours. Albino freak pups !

Mine were also poppin little root nodes out side in search for water n food.

They were ultimately tortured. ..I was thinking of cutting them up for "experimental purposes" ......

but they spoke to me hehehe...so i changed my mind....i thought these little buggers are tough and have endured alot of hardship ..they deserve to have a good go at life.

so.....one i buried in ground, just on surface . Whole stock in ground sideways with little albino pup raised to the sun. It went well. Turned green and started to take off up right. Going well.

The other i decided to take advantage of thin growth and use it as a grafting stock. i grafted a small loph button cutting on it. It took within a a few weeks. It swelled up and is going well.

I think this thin growth is a good idea for grafting use. You can use fat stock cuttings with this thin growth and the lophs take to it really well.

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so the pup i should cut off and and bury underground so just the tip is poking out?

what about the smaller cutting just put it in the shade or something?

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Id lop off the white bits. I have had a cutting do exactly that and managed to green it up overtime. But it was very very slow, hardly worth it.

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i say give the freak a chance. Let it do what i wants.

As they have been laying on its side...surviving. Put it in the ground like that. The white tip and white pup will eventually take off and use the buried large stock as a food source.

You will be surprised what will come of it.

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yeah but chances are it would break when it gets larger as it is stunted/weak @ the base i reckon.

i would cut and root the white etiolated pups and plant the rest seperate.
more plants and they should overall be more healthy in the end.

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lool that looks like an albino cholla @ the bottom pic.... It happens bro,

thats etoliation in case you want to look it up... obviously the cutting didn't want to go dormant...
I don't think anyone knows why a cutting might go dormant and one next to it won't, perhaps how much food is stored
and how how warm it is... You pretty much have to put them in cool temps so that won't happen for sure

or watch them every day or two or just start them off in decent light... I just found one last week starting a yellow tip so I put it in a bright window and it turned back green in a couple days.... Luckily I caught it cause I had it back in the corner and forgot about it.. it showed up here in a cold box at the first of the year but the temps from my heater were enough to inspire new tippage


I had alot of cacti etoliate last year cause I had them in a window.. Even one I got which was etoliating before It even arrived here and had a 1 or 2 inch tip similar to yours, and its now a bowling pin cactus... even semi bright light can be lacking for one of these light loving plants but yes acclimating them is important rather than just putting them in direct sun
but yeah pretty much what everyone else said is true.... I would personally put them in a bright window

or somwhere they'll get alot of light, just not direct sunlight, let them green up and then chop and root them
You'll have new cacti! but they'll be smaller and they'll take a LONG time to catch up

But the big piece will put anywhere from 1 to 3 offsets... you can even go ahead an pot it if its dried and calloused
and then once it greens up chop those off... or you can just chop them off now and I dunno if they'd root like that or not
but I would think it would be better to green them up first... they definitely won't stay that way

You could try and grow them that way without cutting but it'll look like shit and like someone else mentioned that section
of the column will be weaker and eventually break when it grows new...

I've been considering making a thread about my biggest screwups and have other ppl post their funny tips

just so we can look back and laugh later :P I have half a dozen bowling pin cacti

Here is my coolest window freak

post-11432-0-33307400-1360593561_thumb.j
Obviously could have used more sun
last season...

I could almost pass this one off for a mini Browningia Candelaris

post-11432-0-33307400-1360593561_thumb.jpg

post-11432-0-33307400-1360593561_thumb.jpg

Edited by Spine Collector

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RE: Etiolation...

Disclaimer: I'm relatively recent in the cacti game - only a year under my belt.

Just so i'm clear, cacti will etiolate when they do not get enough sunlight? They are 'craving' more of it so are stretching upwards to see what they can get ??? Does temperature play a role at all? Soil moisture? Many questions hath I.

I have a few pachanoi which have decided to etiolate this season (some more than others) yet I have them in the sunniest part of the garden. Whereas, others are growing perfectly columnar. I'm a little confused.

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Normally elongation is caused by not strong enough or not enough light ( hours ) but I have also noticed a few of mine growing a bit skinny this year and they are in full sun.

I believe this is caused by lack of water and fertz as mine have not been very well looked after this year especially as far as water goes. Now that they are getting regular water I have seen all of my Trich's start putting on the same sort of growth that I have seen over the last few years.

If Trich's are in pots with free draining mix and in full sun they do need plenty of water not just a splash every week but a deep water at least a couple of times a week.

My pots dry out easily within a couple of days and now they are being watered four times a week by drippers on my retic system.

My experience with white elongated tips is to plant them out and put them in full shade. Any direct sun will burn them to a crisp and they also seem to be very susceptible to rot so any damage from the sun or other wise most likely will result in black oozing mush.

Cheers

Got

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etiolation can be a good thing aswell, it can be used as a tool to elongate pups (loph) and general growth.

elongated pups are easier to remove, from the mom.

on top etiolation, can be used to facilitate the forming of roots, with plants and cacti.

i guess most cacti, easely probagate from cuttings and will form roots, but with plants this is not always the case.

but, the most difficult, impossible to strike cuttings, will strike, if the source of the cuttings had been etiolated!!

this makes sence to me, even as a layman, the darkness obviously triggeres, some root formation friendly hormones :), within the plant.

aswell this would explain, why some of you reported good growth of your cacti after etiolation had occured.

the only time, i hate the effects of etiolation, is everytime i see a tbm cactus, which looks like the elongated form of the tbm, (the candle tbm) nobody has this cactus in oz, but everytime, a person posts a etiolated tbm picture, my heart misses several beats.

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Just to add, temperature and moisture do absolutely play a role...

below a certain temp a cactus will go into dormancy and therefore not grow so it won't etoliate obviously... also part of dormancy is responding to the dry seasons in the andes.... but since an unrooted cutting has no roots it can still breathe moisture at night through the stoma... so if its real humid I suppose it can have an effect I dunno... Im also curious if foliar feeding might help green up an etoliated plant or not...

Got hit the nail on the head basically...

Lastly, im pretty sure theres something related to being in a pot vs in the ground that has to do with how thick a column might get, not that a cacti can't grow really nicely in a pot or anything... but I wonder if some of mine etoliated cause I hadn't up potted them yet

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Just to add, temperature and moisture do absolutely play a role...

below a certain temp a cactus will go into dormancy and therefore not grow so it won't etoliate obviously... also part of dormancy is responding to the dry seasons in the andes.... but since an unrooted cutting has no roots it can still breathe moisture at night through the stoma... so if its real humid I suppose it can have an effect I dunno... Im also curious if foliar feeding might help green up an etoliated plant or not...

Got hit the nail on the head basically...

Lastly, im pretty sure theres something related to being in a pot vs in the ground that has to do with how thick a column might get, not that a cacti can't grow really nicely in a pot or anything... but I wonder if some of mine etoliated cause I hadn't up potted them yet

i'm posting a lot lately, and i still haven't run out of oomph, hehehe.

you say, "below a certain temp a cactus will go into dormancy and therefore not grow so it won't etoliate obviously..."

and this is a very good remark, and again this fact can be used to advantage.

this is a trick, i picked off, of ms, he lives in a climat, which is quite temperate, but still he avoides that his cacti show any signs of starvation and etiolation. he put's his collection over the winter into his cold garage, without any light, but none of the (colummnar) cacti etiolate or display the sausage look, because they don't grow at all, under those conditions.

Edited by planthelper

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Just to add, temperature and moisture do absolutely play a role...

below a certain temp a cactus will go into dormancy and therefore not grow so it won't etoliate obviously... also part of dormancy is responding to the dry seasons in the andes.... but since an unrooted cutting has no roots it can still breathe moisture at night through the stoma... so if its real humid I suppose it can have an effect I dunno... Im also curious if foliar feeding might help green up an etoliated plant or not...

Got hit the nail on the head basically...

Lastly, im pretty sure theres something related to being in a pot vs in the ground that has to do with how thick a column might get, not that a cacti can't grow really nicely in a pot or anything... but I wonder if some of mine etoliated cause I hadn't up potted them yet

I am a bigger is better kind of person as far as pots go for Trichs. They have big root systems and they need all of they space you can give them to be able to feed a big column. I understand the reason that a lot of people use smallish pots when you have to move them inside every year but if you are in a climate where you grow them outside all year round I believe if you use big pots give them plenty of water and fertz you will get fatter and faster growth. Or plant them in the ground and stand back and watch them turn into monsters. :)

All of the above is taken from my own experiences with my plants in sunny west aus :)

Cheers

Got

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yeah Im putting some PC Pach's in the ground this year... it sucks cause we get a fluke ice storm every 5 years or so. otherwise they would all be in the ground already... I honestly will eventually move to a better climate for my triches cause im all about my plants and I definitely want to be on a property some day which is loaded with tricho flowers...Im half a zone away from IDEAL for most.. The only ones I have in small pots are barely rooted columns. Once they get big enough they go in large to larger sized terra cotta pots... My largest went straight into an 18 gallon tub and im hoping she will flower this year... I don't know how the hell I will move them in this season to be quite honest lol

I am however getting into Terscheckii and other hybrids from that complex as to be able to grow some amazing monsters here...

Trichos are Trees and to grow them in pots is bonzai but what can I say :innocent_n:

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