My Yellow Moon Cactus
(Family: Cactaceae, Genus: Gymnocalycium)
My little beautiful cactus is a gift from my husband for getting really good mark from one of my last year courses. I named it Einstein because of its big hairy head! I put it among our other plants; in my imagination it is a thinker of them. During winter, I put it near the heater because I knew it didn’t like cold weather; however, in theses hot sunny summer days, I put it in indirect sunlight because I know hotter sun closer to midday could burn the plant. I water my cactus once a week because it doesn’t need much water.
The yellow orb on its top is not a flower. It is part of the regular plant. The reason why it is a bright yellow instead of the typical green is that it lacks chlorophyll. Yellow part survives only by being grafted to a robust stock plant, green part. Yellow moon cactus is actually what is called a grafted cactus. That is, attaching one type of cactus to another to grow as one. The top cactus is a desert cactus and the bottom one is a jungle cactus. The bottom one, green part, has the chlorophyll and the roots to provide all the needs of the top plant, yellow part. They adapted to hot environments, showing features which conserve water for example the leaves have become the spines. They are almost exclusively New World plants. This means that they are native only in North America, South America, and the West Indies. I try to keep my cactus as long as it wants to be our plants thinker. My yellow moon cactus can live 20-300 years it is a little bit longer than what I can live physically!
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