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Cleistocactus Samaipatanus Golden Rats Tail Cactus
One well established bare-rooted plant at least 15cm long!
Free Australia wide shipping is included and if you buy a few in the one order I will chuck in extras.
It will have all the soil removed from the roots to prevent rotting in transit. It will then be carefully wrapped in dry paper, cardboard, or other suitable recycled packaging material, then shipped out to your location.
On arrival immediately unwrap it and place in a sheltered location out of the sun for a few days or maybe a week, then plant it in a well draining rocky soil mix. It is very important you DO NOT WATER for at least two weeks because if you do it may get root rot and die. Once the two weeks are up you can then gradually move it from sheltered to full sun light and start watering every week or two as per normal.
Growth is very very rapid and it produces pups and side shoots from around the base constantly followed by beautiful frilly red flowers.
It is very easy to propagate from cuttings and the only thing you need to do is cut a piece off and allow it to dry for a few weeks. You can apply yellow sulphur powder, garden lime, or rooting hormone to the cut end if you want but it makes very little difference in my experience.
I am yet to have a failure with or without and it made no noticeable differences to growth rates in my trials with this particular species.
That is not the same result as with other species that are much fussier.
Once the cut end is very dry and well calloused maybe even a little shriveled, just plant it shallowly in a nice well draining rocky soil mix and that’s it. Roots within the month, beautiful flowers 6-12months later.
As soon as that cutting is well rooted you can cut the top off it and just do it again making one plant into millions if you want.
It is a native of Bolivia and can handle much colder temperatures than I get here In Queensland but like most cactus heavy frost can be an issue. Here extreme night time lows of 5c all the way up to crazy hot 45c+ days didn’t slow it down at all.
Like a few different similar looking species it is commonly called rats tail cactus or golden rats tail cactus, and it was once known as Bolivicereus brevicaulis, Bolivicereus croceus, Bolivicereus rufus,Bolivicereus samaipatanus, Bolivicereus samaipatanus subs divi-miseratus, Bolivicereus samaipatanus var divi-miseratus, Bolivicereus samaipatanus var multiflorus, Borzicactus samaipatanus, Borzicactus samaipatanus var divi-miseratus, Borzicactus samaipatanus var divimiseratus, Borzicactus samaipatanus var multiflorus, Cleistocactus roseiflorus, Cleistocactus samaipatensis and even Akersia roseiflora.
It is was the winner of Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit in 2017 and and it’s pretty easy to see why!
With my main passion being Edible Cactus Fruit I originally bought it for rootstock trials and I really wasn’t particularly interested in it especially since it didn’t have these beautiful red flowers. In my experience it does work for emergency grafting of common dragonfruit and apple cactus, but does not perform as well as other options like Hylocereus Rootstocks and it is only a stop gap measure.
It pretty good for some Trichocereus, and very good for some species Peniocereus, Tephrocactus and Selenicereus cacti.
That said these days I value it much more just as a beautiful drought tolerant ornamental in its own right. Because mine are all the same cultivar it will flower profusely but it never ever set seeds or fruit.
***If you have an unrelated seedling or a cutting that was not originally sourced from me then I would love to do a swap with you or buy a cutting so that our plants can cross-pollinate and maybe we both get fruit and seed set.
Feel free to hit me up for a swap via the FairDinkumSeeds Contact form, same deal if you have any other interesting plants, especially drought tolerant hardy species.
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems, no nasties, no problems!
