Prickly pear and Christmas cactus are two in model flowering cacti that are sometimes grown as houseplants. And, whereas their leaves and kind look distinct from each other, the magenta-colored blooms may confuse anyone making an attempt to recall which one is which.
Here’s what you may need to know in regards to the distinction between prickly pear versus Christmas cactus and the way one can set up each.
Prickly Pear vs. Christmas Cactus: Important Variations
On the simplest diploma, the excellence between prickly pear and Christmas cactus is that they’re completely totally different crops. Every are members of the Cactaceae family, nevertheless prickly pear is a conventional spiny cactus native to every North and South America, whereas Christmas cactus is a smooth-leafed cactus native to the Brazilian rain forest.
These two cacti moreover bloom at completely totally different cases, have vastly completely totally different appearances and growth habits, and they also thrive under completely totally different conditions.
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Look
Every prickly pear and Christmas cactus are often inexperienced with pink blooms, nevertheless that’s the place the similarities end. Prickly pear has spiny, flat, club-shaped pads that seem just like the form of cactus you sometimes contemplate inside the desert.
That’s the type of cactus you don’t want to get too close to—besides you’re prepared to start deciding on barbs out of your clothes. When prickly pear blooms, it produces pink or yellow flowers which lastly flip into darkish pink fruit.
Christmas cactus, then once more, has flat, segmented leaves that cascade spherical it like a waterfall. It produces blooms that are pink, purple, white, purple or orange. These flowers will go away behind fruit.
Progress Habits
Once you see a full grown prickly pear subsequent to a Christmas cactus, there is no mistaking which is which. Prickly pears can soar to eight ft tall and large when grown out of doors. Within the meantime, Christmas cacti are far more petite variety of cactus, maxing out at one foot tall and two ft large.
Typically, prickly pear will unfold in clumps, whereas Christmas cactus is a popular hanging plant as a result of method through which its leaves spill over the facet of a container.
Flowering Time
Prickly pear and Christmas cactus bloom at reverse cases of 12 months, which is often a pleasant hack once you’ve bought every in your own home as houseplants and wish flowers year-round.
Resembling you’d anticipate from its title, the Christmas cactus generally blooms throughout the vacations. Chances are high you may start to see blooms as early as November, and they also’ll proceed via January.
Within the meantime, the prickly pear blooms late spring via early summer season season.
Rising Requirements
Prickly pear is a desert plant that loves sunny, dry conditions. Give it full photo voltaic or six hours of direct daylight every day. Successfully-draining sandy or gravelly soil is biggest for the prickly pear to thrive, and it’s possible you’ll want to restrict watering to as quickly as every two or three weeks. Make sure the soil dries out completely between watering and under no circumstances let the soil turn into soaked with water.
Because of Christmas cactus is an area rainforest plant, it need 4 to six hours of indirect or filtered delicate every day. It does correctly with acidic, sandy cactus mix soil or widespread potting soil with perlite. It should even be allowed to dry out between watering.
How one can Set up a Prickly Pear
Getty Photographs/Hal Wilson / 500px
To acknowledge a prickly pear inside the wild (or a minimal of the greenhouse), seek for a cactus that has flat, club-shaped leaves with spines overlaying the leaves. Counting on the time of 12 months, it might have pink or yellow blooms, magenta fruit, or nothing previous the leaves themselves. Sometimes, you’ll uncover it rising in a clump-like habits.
When grown as a houseplant, it’s going to possible be a smaller plant nevertheless, inside the desert, it could effectively attain eight ft extreme.
How one can Set up a Christmas Cactus
Getty Photographs/Евгения Матвеец
Christmas cactus is an merely recognizable plant, considerably once you see it over the holidays. It has cascading flat inexperienced leaves that are segmented from excessive of the stem to bottom. It hardly reaches a few foot extreme and two ft large, and, once you see it between November and January, it’ll have its signature pink blooms.