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sobriquet

My first lopho 2 pereskiopsis grafts.

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I performed my first ever Lophophora 2 Pereskiopsis graft.

The loph seedlings weren't really growing at all after 4 months and I decided I'd experiment with them. In one of the grafts I used one of Eileen's larger spines to fix the graft!

We'll see how it goes. I'm considering it as practice or a trial run for the competition coming up on EBA.

Peace.

Edited by sobriquet

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Just a question about these.

When does it become apparent that a graft has failed?

The base section that I was suspicious about ( the small fragment on the right in the second photo ) that I put on as an afterthought has already shrivelled to nothing.

The main meristem is still present but smaller in volume. The other pinned/spined one is also a bit smaller but intact.

I watered them today thinking that they probably now need a bit of hydrostatic pressure to rehydrate them.

Anyone have any comments on when a graft is considered "safe"?

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give them a week in humidity, you only really know they took when they start to grow. Ive had them sit in limbo for months not growing not dieing.

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give them a week in humidity, you only really know they took when they start to grow. Ive had them sit in limbo for months not growing not dieing.

Thanks for the advice teo.

I've had a plastic humidity-dome on the spined one, and a plastic tent over the smaller but its 'leaky' straight after grafting. I'll put a more complete dome (probably a cut drink bottle) tomorrow.

I watered them today and hopefully it won't push the graft off or anything like that.

I need more pereskiopsis stock, and I'll have to hold off on any more grafts till the cutting tips I got from these start growing again.

Just another question. I didn't cut the leaves and scrape off the top areoles on the peres here. I thought that people did this to suppress new pereskiopsis shoots? I chose to leave them because I thought... with the limited biomass that the extra leaves would provide more 'juice' to grow the grafts?

Will the peres offset from the top areoles? If they do I might let them go for a little bit in order to get some more pereskiopsis stock even if it takes away some of the energy to the graft.

That's all assuming the grafts take.

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Hey Sob. Firstly, just wondering why you put the spike through the seedling? Wouldn't that cause a hole, stress the seedling and possily allow rot to set in or split it in half nearly?

With my pereskiopsis I believe that my first ever successful Pereskiopsis attempt is happening right now as the seedling seems to be taking and I'm hoping my 2nd one should take in a few days (looks very healthy and promising so far). I found about 4 days in a humid environment out of direct sunlight was ok, then I moved the graft to a spot outside out of humidity which is mostly shade. This way the graft got used to non-humid air, natural daylight away from the sun, but elimination of direct sun shrivelling the scion was also made sure of. I've realised what my three biggest problems have been in pereskiopsis grafting. Firstly choose a green healthy seedling, from my attempts if it has brown, rot, or is stressed or discoloured it will quickly shrivel up after attempting to graft. Secondly, try and choose a seedling a few weeks old rather than a few days old, as I've found the bigger the seedlings the more circumference and ability they have to attempt to bond and grow (survive) to the pereskiopsis. I've found if I use smaller seedlings they quickly shrivel up and die. Next of all, make sure the cut it done once and very very straight. If it's not done perfectly straight my previous attempts have shown me that the entire surface of the seedling doesn't bond, and what I believe to be (some kind of rot, either through air or moisture immediately sets in, and the seedling shrivels up). Currently I'm keeping my first pereskiopsis graft out of direct sunlight for a few weeks, in the back of my greenhouse behind a shadecloth and behind all my other cacti, so it gets a dash of filtered sunlight through the side. When it reaches a few cms I think I'll bring it towards the front of my mini cactus house, then eventually up a level where it will get more sunlight, but till then I'm just making sure the graft has adapted on to the pereskiopsis properly for a few weeks. I will be very pleased if this scion continues to grow as it's a very beautiful Loph W 'Villa Arista' strain, whilst my other recent one is a Loph W 'Paila'. If your pereskiopsis graft does not succeed never give up, just try and try and try again!!

On the same note, today I saw a very very small caterpillar (1cm long) crawling over my Villa Arista scion!!!! I flicked it off with tweezers and it was killed, so I'm wondering what the best way to protect Lophs (seedlings in particular) from insects (such as small loph eating caterpillars) is? I sprayed a bit of natrasoap onto my pereskiopsis just to make sure no other nasties were around too.

Edited by SaBReT00tH

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yeah I was gonna say somthing about using the spike but figured may aswell let it go and see how it turns out. Some other stuff people have said:

- Only graft to the very tip of the peres where the tissues are undefined, true when your using week old seedlings with undefined tissue.

- Use a razor blade, a sharp one. Razor blades wont squash the seedlings, you want minimal tissue damage.

- If you use older seedlings with defined tissue you may havta cut lower on the peres and apply some pressure. same goes for pups.

- The bigger the peres the better.

- Dont water for a while before and after you do it otherwise the tugor pressure will push it off, keep it humid so it doesnt dehydrate before then.

All you answers can be found in the pereskiopsis grafting competition thread at the nook!!

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sobriquet,

I haven't cut off or scrapped and areols on my peres. graft. I do think this just causes stress for the plant. When a new shoot starts to appear on the rootstock i carfully dig it out without damaging the leaf to much. This stops the shoot from growing and maximises the loph growth.

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Hey Sob. Firstly, just wondering why you put the spike through the seedling? Wouldn't that cause a hole, stress the seedling and possily allow rot to set in or split it in half nearly?

Hi Sabre,

The spine fixation thing is something I picked up from some cactus propagation books. Other fixation materials like toothpicks etc have been used but the advantage of the spine is that apparently it does not cause any scarring to the plant once it is 'absorbed'. I have no practical experience so I just had to trust the more experienced book writters that they knew what they were talking about.

I thought of using a thin sterile insulin needle but that would leave scarring.

Also when I thought about the 'physics' of it, if you look at the spike, it has a taper. So when you push it through the scion and then the stock its going to tend to put some pressure on between the two. Because the base of the spike is thicker, unlike something with straight sides like a needle etc. So it is really ingenious in my opinion of whoever thought of this technique.

The other beauty of the spine is that it is SO sharp, and pierces through the scion like a hot knife through butter. It has no cutting point so it is just spreading the cells around it rather than cutting through them, like a needle point.

Anyhow, I was convinced that it might be a useful enough technique that I tried it, and probably would again.

Hope that helps in relation to why I tried it :)

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Hey teo,

yeah I was gonna say somthing about using the spike but figured may aswell let it go and see how it turns out. Some other stuff people have said:

The spikes an experiment to be sure, but one I thought useful enough to try out. See my reply above for why, but I'm like your statement of let's see how it turns out :)

About the other tips I'm not certain of how well I understand the reasoning:

- Only graft to the very tip of the peres where the tissues are undefined, true when your using week old seedlings with undefined tissue.

Makes sense superficially but the vascular channel you are grafting to is not undefined or meristematic tissue anyhow. If this had validity then grafts to other older stocks like Echinopsis would fail. In any case my seedlings were a few months old and not growing very well.

- Use a razor blade, a sharp one. Razor blades wont squash the seedlings, you want minimal tissue damage.

Used a fresh isopropyl wiped (and allowed to dry) thin razor blade.

- If you use older seedlings with defined tissue you may havta cut lower on the peres and apply some pressure. same goes for pups.

Maybe the spike will help in this so it might have been a good bet.

- The bigger the peres the better.

Makes sense. I had limited material. The tips had to be long enough to plant as tip cuttings so this aspect of my grafts are lacking.

However my understanding of grafting is a little contrary to this in that I always believed grafting was to get the benefits of the root stock of a more vigorous plant and that the length of plant you leave is irrelevant. What I mean is that while using an older and thicker plant is better in that it would have a bigger rootball; once you have decided to use it as a rootstock then even if you cut it close to the base you'd still get the benefits.

- Dont water for a while before and after you do it otherwise the tugor pressure will push it off, keep it humid so it doesnt dehydrate before then.

Yes I avoided watering two days before the grafts to reduce this 'pushing off' phenomenon.

All you answers can be found in the pereskiopsis grafting competition thread at the nook!!

I read the entire thread some while ago, and then last week. One of the guys who was vocal at the beginning (Martin I think) falls off the edge of the earth after a gap of a few months. Maybe his collection succumbed to some rot or other disaster or something?

It's great that you've summarised the thread here though. It's a long thread with precious few nuggets.

Cheers.

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Hi Sobriquet, I think the reason the technique with the spike is being queried is because the majority of pereskiopsis grafts simply place the scion onto the stock without "fixing" it in any way apart from initial manual pressure. This way no damage is done to the seedling, and if any extra stickiness is needed to keep the seedling in place one may use a little of the sap from one of the pereskiopsis' leaves as a kind of "glue".

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Yep. I've read about the spine technique before also, but I think it is mostly used for more mature grafts which require pressure to keep them held on. Seedlings are small enough that the stickiness of their sap can hold their weight.

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Hey Teo,

I totally agree about the sharp razorblade. That's what I was saying before about doing a straight cut (complete guillotine style on a 45 degree movement across kinda thing, lol), as the razorblade is the best thing IMO to do this. Even rusty or slightly blunt razorblades can sometimes squash the seedling as it's very easy to do, in which case the scion (and thus graft) is usually screwed from my experience. I've found that if I cutoff a pereskiopsis shoot, and another grows back off a different aeriole, I can potentially graft anywhere on that entire shoot as it's new fresh material and not thick, hard and core-like like the main mature stem. I agree with you in that I find using these types of 'older' plants have bigger roots and thus more power to take-on the scion which is always pleasant.

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Makes sense superficially but the vascular channel you are grafting to is not undefined or meristematic tissue anyhow. If this had validity then grafts to other older stocks like Echinopsis would fail. In any case my seedlings were a few months old and not growing very well.
By underfined i mean that the tissue has not setup meta-xylem and phloem? Still in proto phase. Its been awhile since I did botany and Ive got an exam tomorrow so have no time to look it up but thats what I remember.

You can graft seedlings with undefined tissue to stocks with undefined tissue and plants with defined tissue to plants with defined tissue, any variation im not sure how it would go. All I can say is all my attempts with seedlings into echinopisis seedlings about 10cm were absorbed into the stock. Good luck getting a seedling to graft onto somthing with welldefined vascular tissue.

Yeah the spike thing works well..... for older stocks :) What the other guys said is right, size is a big thing.

However my understanding of grafting is a little contrary to this in that I always believed grafting was to get the benefits of the root stock of a more vigorous plant and that the length of plant you leave is irrelevant. What I mean is that while using an older and thicker plant is better in that it would have a bigger rootball; once you have decided to use it as a rootstock then even if you cut it close to the base you'd still get the benefits.

In general bigger stocks have bigger rootballs. What you say is true for normal plants inwhich it is desirable to remove and branches and photosynthetic apparatus from the stock. Cacti are one big photosynthetic apparatus so they will continue to photosynthesise, this is one reason why albino cacti can be grown because the stock continues to photosynthesise. If you graft onto cut cacti then the bigger ones will support the scion for longer then smaller ones, more reserves.

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I thought of using a thin sterile insulin needle but that would leave scarring.

I have tried grafting with rubber bands and sterilised (with isoprop then dried) metal needles to hold the scion in place but the result was death in the surrounding flesh that the needle was in. It went red and mushy then rotten, i had to carve out large chunks from my grafting stock to stop the rot.

I then tried again using large spikes from another cactus and it worked perfectly with no damage to the stock.

It seems to me that the metal has a bad reaction with the cactus maybe like some types of metal are rejected from the human body if implanted.

The spines are ideal because they are the sharpest non-metal type of spike i can think of.

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Literallu minutes ago I just stuffed up the first graft with the spike!!

Removing the humidity cover I slipped and accidentally moved the graft right off the stock.

Wasn't meant to be it seems. The other one has a small nubbin of tissue remaining but I'm pessimistic about it.

Pity as I don't have any other seedlings at the moment to graft.

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where the graft was knocked off does it look moist or is it dry or red? might be able to tell if it was going to be successful or not. maybe you just saved yourself a week or 2 of waiting and hoping when it wasnt going to be successful anyway?

if you want to swap a small pup for something let me know. pups seem easier to learn to graft.

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Hey sob,

very sorry to hear bout ur pereskiopsis graft failling. Is the scion still big enough (and hydrated/healthy) to cutoff the bottom and regraft to another pereskiopsis again? The last few days I've gone insane at the apparent (so far so good) taking of my first two scions ever, as reported in my previous posts and have grafted to the rest of my 8 or so pereskiopsis'. One of my successful grafts has also included the bottom of a Lophophora Paila with the root bit sticking out. In the past these root atempts have shrivelled and failed but I'm hoping to try it every time now so I can multiple my grafting scions by 2, which is SUCH a good feeling when it succeeds :) Today, I fished out two seedlings from my sad slow and somewhat unpromising ariocarpus, astrophytum asteria 'superkerbuto' tray growing on their own roots and have attempted to graft them on 2 pereskiopsis's. They're not red coloured, but are kinda of slight yellowish with the ariocarpus seedling also being a dull grey near the top. I guess only time will tell if the graft is successful and miraculously regenerates the two seedlings back into prosperous health, but hey experimenting with (and saving) scions onto pereskiopsis is fun.

Still have one more question for all: after a scion has been taken by the pereskiopsis plant, I'm guessing the plant should stay in shade for a few weeks right?? Then does it get moved into full sunlight or filtered sun (under shadecloth) or semi shade/semi-sun???

Also, has anyone ever tried any aeriole grafting onto a pereskiopsis? I'm even thinking maybe anything under a 1cm trich aeriole or even a Lophophora aeriole (if that's possible). Gets me pondering over experimentation with a TBM aeriole onto pereskiopsis.

Edited by SaBReT00tH

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Hey sob,

very sorry to hear bout ur pereskiopsis graft failling. Is the scion still big enough (and hydrated/healthy) to cutoff the bottom and regraft to another pereskiopsis again? The last few days I've gone insane at the apparent (so far so good) taking of my first two scions ever, as reported in my previous posts and have grafted to the rest of my 8 or so pereskiopsis'. One of my successful grafts has also included the bottom of a Lophophora Paila with the root bit sticking out. In the past these root atempts have shrivelled and failed but I'm hoping to try it every time now so I can multiple my grafting scions by 2, which is SUCH a good feeling when it succeeds :) Today, I fished out two seedlings from my sad slow and somewhat unpromising ariocarpus, astrophytum asteria 'superkerbuto' tray growing on their own roots and have attempted to graft them on 2 pereskiopsis's. They're not red coloured, but are kinda of slight yellowish with the ariocarpus seedling also being a dull grey near the top. I guess only time will tell if the graft is successful and miraculously regenerates the two seedlings back into prosperous health, but hey experimenting with (and saving) scions onto pereskiopsis is fun.

Still have one more question for all: after a scion has been taken by the pereskiopsis plant, I'm guessing the plant should stay in shade for a few weeks right?? Then does it get moved into full sunlight or filtered sun (under shadecloth) or semi shade/semi-sun???

Also, has anyone ever tried any aeriole grafting onto a pereskiopsis? I'm even thinking maybe anything under a 1cm trich aeriole or even a Lophophora aeriole (if that's possible). Gets me pondering over experimentation with a TBM aeriole onto pereskiopsis.

Aeriole grafting link

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If one grafted a loph to a pereskiopsis would it be best to keep the plant in the pereskiopsis's natural environment (maybe sit in a bucket of water in a humidity tent), or in the lophs natural environment (filtered sunlight, dry air) for best growth?

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it appears the couple of orange scions I put on haven't taken and the pereskiopsis has kinda pushed them off. Probably cause they aren't growing. I'm gonna leave them on anyway till they shrivel up just in case.

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On 16/11/2006 at 10:30 PM, teonanacatl said:

give them a week in humidity, you only really know they took when they start to grow. Ive had them sit in limbo for months not growing not dieing.

Hi Teonanacatl,

Sorry to bring up an old thread. Do you know what the cause of this 'limbo' is?, is there a way to avoid it? I have an ario grafted on pere that isn't plump, yet not shrivelled either; it's been like this for 2 weeks!

 

Thank you, 

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Wow !    now THAT is an epic bump ! :o

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On 11/09/2021 at 11:24 PM, mcgrath111 said:

Hi Teonanacatl,

Sorry to bring up an old thread. Do you know what the cause of this 'limbo' is?, is there a way to avoid it? I have an ario grafted on pere that isn't plump, yet not shrivelled either; it's been like this for 2 weeks!

 

Thank you, 

 

 

Hey McGrath , Consider this "2 week limbo" as a recalibration period for the peres and the scion. It can be months though.

 

There is no way to avoid it but I have found that some types "take" faster than others.

 

I have found it better to do a good amount of grafts as some will not take for you. Especially when getting started.

 

 

 

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Parafilm greatly improved my success rate.  I dont touch them, dont move them, dont even look sideways at em.  For the initial period anyway.

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