flowering VS growth

[strangebrew]

I just wondering whether anyone else has noticed that flowering seems to inhibit vertical growth in Trichocereus.

The reason I ask is that last year was the first year one of my ped's flowered and it was a beautiful thing, but overall growth was way down compared to other years.

If growth was your main aim, would it be better to cut the buds off when they appear and forsake flowering altogether?

[Torsten]

Pedros flower when stressed. So maybe your lack of growth was a symptom of stress rather than a symptom of flowering, and hence flowering was only an indicator of the stress.

[Rev]

strangebrew:

If growth was your main aim, would it be better to cut the buds off when they appear and forsake flowering altogether?

Im jealous. The only pedro ive ever had flower was an arm i bought off gom which already had the buds

Rather than seeing as disadvantage perhaps get some other clones and start making seed

One fruit is a thousand seeds amd a whole ot of exciting possibilities

After all even if it dosnt grow much the maturing of the existing biomass might probably compensate.

Our Echinopsis show a distinct preference to Pup or flower in any given year

We encourage them to do whatever they choose well by feeding them throughout the growth season with a fertiliser with more phosphorus to compenaste for flowering, seed production and pup removal

[Guest Asterias13]

This year was also the first for flowering on one of my Pedros. We had a very dry start to the growing season in France this year, which might account for the stress needed to stimulate flowering, but, while growth was slower this year on all of my Trichs, it was particularly so on the one which flowered. I watched growth carefully during the flowering, and noticed that the plant grew more slowly than its genetically-identical neighbors, only to take up at the same rate after dropping the fruit for lack of pollen.

Vertical growth is certainly faster in many other plants when in a vegetative phase than when in a sexual one, so why not in cacti? Keeping in phase with the fertiliser is essential.

[strangebrew]

I can't think why it would have been stressed but it was doing some strange tip changes before it flowered. At one stage the tips filled out and were really rounded, it looked more like a pachycereus.