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Glossary

Callus

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The hard, dry, shiny scab that forms over a fresh cut as it heals. A cutting must have one before it is planted, or the wet wound rots in the soil. An ordinary cutting takes one to two weeks, longer when the air is very humid; a slim pup is quicker and a fat column slower. The finished face is what tells you, and you will never be early, growers say. Drying too long is a far smaller problem than drying too little.

Where you meet it: Cuttings, buying

callusring scar
A finished callus: dry, hard and slightly shiny, sealed edge to edge. It should feel like a fingernail, not like flesh.What a finished callus looks like: one to two weeks in warm dry shade for an ordinary cutting, longer when the air is very humid. A cutting listed as callused arrives like this.

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Sources

Learned from the sanpedrocact.us community wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0) and from @sanpedromastery6262 on YouTube.

Every photograph in the yard pages and the shop is of a plant grown here, except where a listing says it was grown by somebody else — it says so on the listing, above the price.

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