I did not intend to have 5 Thanksgiving cacti. But, I do.

Chuck gave me one that is white in the middle with fuchsia edges and that was it for a while. We always just called it a Holiday cactus but it seemed to bloom randomly with no particular holiday having significance.

Then, I saw a meme that showed the difference between Xmas cactus, Thanksgiving cactus and Easter cactus.

I don’t remember where I saw it originally, but it led me to a FaceBook Group that was all about all the holiday cacti. And I joined for a while. (Mine is a Thanksgiving cactus.) The group was a revelation of how many varieties there are.

Someone posted a picture of their yellow variety and I developed a deep and abiding yearning for one. I looked on line to order one. But they were all either out of stock or the shipping was so high I refused to participate. It was “keep an eye peeled” time.

This was around the time my mother moved to a smaller apartment, 3 floors up from the 2 bedroom apartment she had occupied with my father. And someone on her new floor had put all their thanksgiving cacti out by the elevators. One pot had red and yellow plants together.

😈 I pinched a little piece.

Later, I met the woman it belonged to in the elevator and confessed. She said I was welcome to take as much as I wanted.

I got it home, stuck it in some dirt and it didn’t die. It even started to grow.

I was very excited.

As I waited for it to get big enough to bloom, I continued playing with other plants. One day, I was in home Depot and they had big pots of Thanksgiving cacti on sale. One had light buds. None open. I thought “OMG! I don’t have to wait!” and promptly whisked it home. Where all the buds dropped off without opening. 🙄

So. 3 different pots of Thanksgiving cactus. And a friend gave me a piece of her plant, that she didn’t remember the color of. Now, up to 4.

Several months later, the pinched plant started to get buds. And they did NOT look yellow. As a matter of fact, they looked dark pink. -Ish. I thought I was about to have 2 fuchsia plants and knew I would happily give the pinch away since it was the smallest and had not been a gift.

It was not fuchsia. It is red. As was the one my friend had given me.

Soon after that, the light one I got from Home Depot got buds. Finally! Yellow! Except…. the bigger the buds got, the darker they appeared.

Peach!!

Lovely, unexpected, not actually what I was hoping for peach.

And let me say, I do not dislike any of them. They are glorious when they’re all bloomed out. Kind of boring when they aren’t. But, que sera sera.

However. Not Yellow.

But!

We stopped by my mother’s apartment on our way to celebrate our anniversary and the yellow one was still by the elevator and it was blooming. I pinched a piece that had a blossom to be absolutely sure I had the color I intended.

And I lost it in the car when we were unloading. I found it 2 days later, wilted, cold and sad. But I kept it wrapped in a wet napkin until I could get it home and stuck it in some dirt.

Tah dah!

I did give the extra red one to another friend. And I have given pieces of all of these to anyone who has asked. Including mailing them all over the country. And a coworker has as big of a plant addiction as I do, so she has several of them.

And, bless her heart, she gave me a piece of one of hers that I didn’t already have.

So, fuchsia, red, peach, yellow and white. All Thanksgiving cacti. I rotate them so that which ever is blooming is in the living room where we will see it/them while they bloom.

And, lately, they seem to be on rotation. White was blooming in early January; peach bloomed 2 weeks later; fuchsia bloomed 2 weeks after that; red 2 weeks later; yellow has been blooming for a week or so and white has buds, again.