Pups, cresting and monstrose forms
Some cacti grow wrong, and collectors keep them that way. One lookalike is a contagious disease. How to tell them apart.
30-second version first, the whole guide below5 min read
The short version
- Melted, lumpy, brain-like, fanned instead of columnar: collectors keep these odd growth forms on purpose.
- Monstrose plants reportedly flip between normal and weird growth all their lives.
- The tell, growers say, is a pup on a pup on a pup, every areole on each new pup already pushing out another.
- There is no known cure, it spreads, and it is said to kill the plant in the end.
- Keep the plant away from the rest and watch.
Your setup
Pick yours to see what changes in this guide.
Where it grows
In the ground
Nothing in this guide changes in the ground.
In a pot
If confirmed, bin plant and pot together.
Where it lives
Outdoors
Pest damage can, growers say, terminate the tip and force a dense pup cluster that clears once the pest is treated, and some genetic lines cluster naturally.
Indoors
Keep the plant away from the rest and watch.
The season
Winter
Nothing in this guide changes in winter.
Not winter
Nothing in this guide changes outside winter.
Lines are from this guide, or from the cultivar library where one says so. For where they come from, see the end of the guide.
Introduction
Melted, lumpy, brain-like, fanned instead of columnar: collectors keep these odd growth forms on purpose. One lookalike is a contagious disease. Learn to tell them apart by eye.
Normal first: pups
A is a new branch. It only starts at an areole. Six areoles means about six branches, however well you grow it, growers say.
Interactive
Where a new head can start
Find the areoles — the small felted spots the spines come out of. Every pup, every flower and every branch on this plant begins at one of them, and nowhere else. Count them and you have counted the cuttings a piece can ever give you.
Part 3 of 9
Areole
The felted spot the spines grow out of, and the only place anything new starts — spines, flowers and branches all come from here. Count them: a cutting with six areoles can make about six branches.
Full. The column is holding all the water it can, and the gaps between the ribs are at their widest.
Areole. The felted spot the spines grow out of, and the only place anything new starts — spines, flowers and branches all come from here. Count them: a cutting with six areoles can make about six branches. Ribs: Ribs spread wide and flat.
Cut the growing tip and, growers say, the plant branches instead of pushing everything into one point. A cut usually gives two or three heads, growers say; one eight-inch tip gave five on top and five from the base. Damage does the same. A collapsed thirteen-foot column pupped prolifically from its .
A tip that stops extending has terminated. That is normal: it keeps fattening and the plant branches instead.
The vocabulary
- : growers call it strange, irregular growth instead of neat ribbed columns. One recognized style, melted wax, is described as ribs dissolving into flowing shapes.
- , or cristate. The growing point stretches into a line, making brain-like fans. Starts at the base or the tip.
- . Constantly making new heads, each growing at normal speed, so growers say the plant bulks up several times faster than one column.
- Variegated means more than one flesh color on one plant. Yellow is the most prized.
- Revert: a monstrose growing normal ribbed growth again. It can go strange again later.
- Four winds. A stretch of stem temporarily growing only four ribs. A behavior, not a , growers say, though one is also named Four Winds.
- TBM and are monstrose and monstrose . You will meet these constantly.
Figure
Four ways the same plant grows
The same machinery running four different programs, side by side. Every one of these is healthy. The lookalike that is not comes further down the page.
Columnar
The default: straight ribs, areoles in rows, one busy tip.
Monstrose
The ribs melt into lumps. The areoles are still there — scattered.
Crested
The growing point stretches into a line, so it fans instead of climbing.
Variegated
Two flesh colors on one plant, running in sectors along the ribs.
Crested
One growing point stretched into a line, growers say, fanning out sideways like a zip.
Caespitose
Many separate, normal-looking heads, all growing at once.
Crested
One growing point stretched into a line, growers say, fanning out sideways like a zip.
Caespitose
Many separate, normal-looking heads, all growing at once.
Mutations are moving targets
None of these forms is fixed. Monstrose plants reportedly flip between normal and weird growth all their lives. Some never show it at all: one grower says they only learned their ordinary-looking pachanoi carried the genes when about half its seedlings came out monstrose. What moves the expression:
- Age. Many reportedly look ordinary for their first year or two, so a young "revert" is often just juvenile growth.
- Damage: a slug or sucking bug can, growers say, leave one with shifted ribs, skipped and little nubs, while another clone just scars over.
- Grafting — growers say the same clone can be a normal column on and a lumpy mess on its own roots.
First year
reads as normal
The year after
ribs break up · knobs · lumps
Sellers list long and short form monstrose bridgesii and price them as two things, whatever the genetics settle. The long form costs more, sellers say, because it carries hardly any areoles. New branches start nowhere else, growers say, so each plant gives almost nothing to propagate from.
Variegation
Variegated plants reportedly grow noticeably slower, especially while establishing, and variegation can appear gradually on a plant that looked plain. Fully yellow tissue has no chlorophyll and cannot feed itself, so growers say variegated and low-chlorophyll clones are usually kept on a green rootstock. seedlings reportedly come up pure white and die within a week or two.
The one that is not a mutation
Witch's broom looks like a spectacular monstrose. It is a contagious infection.
The tell, growers say, is a pup on a pup on a pup, every areole on each new pup already pushing out another. Alongside it, growers say: ribs reduced or missing, miniature dense spines buried in excess wool, going yellow to red as growth outruns supply. The cause, growers say, is a spread by sap-sucking insects like . There is no known cure, it spreads, and it is said to kill the plant in the end. Do not buy one.
Figure
Three clustering plants, one of them sick
Clustered growth is usually nothing to worry about, and the disease is mistaken for the healthy forms all the time. So here they are together.
Many heads
healthy
Several columns off one base, each a full-width plant with its own ribs and its own tip. This form puts on mass faster than a single stem.
A terminated tip
healthy
The growing point simply stopped. The plant answers by pushing new heads below it, and the old tip still fattens.
Witch's broom
do not buy it
A pup on a pup on a pup, with the ribs gone, the spines shrunk into wool and the skin turning. Insects carry it between plants, and it does not get better.
Before condemning a plant you already own: benign lookalikes exist. Pest damage can, growers say, terminate the tip and force a dense pup cluster that clears once the pest is treated, and some genetic lines cluster naturally. Lookalikes do not keep stacking. Pup on pup on pup with ribs dissolving is the disease, not a phase.
One more mark worth knowing, growers say: where one cactus has jabbed another, the scars come in a line or a cluster. That pattern means mechanical damage, not disease. A mark that scrapes off is, growers say, probably pest or debris; one that will not is old scarring.
Common mistakes, try it, quick check and sources
Quick check
Question 1: A cactus is growing lumpy and irregular, and new pups are coming out of every areole of other new pups. What do you do?
Question 2: Your monstrose clone has started growing a normal-looking column. Have you lost the mutation?
Question 3: Why are cuttings of the long form of monstrose bridgesii so much rarer than of the short form?
