Christmas Cactus 2009-11-25 002

It's lovely.

Great close up , the colours look so fresh!!

Thanks for your comments, ladies. It is lovely & yes, the colours DO look very fresh, like they have been through a shower of rain! LOL!

They are true cacti. They belong to the Cactaceae family like the prickly desert ones.

I'm afraid you are wrong, Hywel, as these are tropical succulents & would soon die in a desert setting! I put Christmas Cactus into Google with the intention of trying to find its true botanical name but became distracted with reading the growing tips on the the I put in a link to. I wanted to look it up in my RHS Garden Plant Dictionary.

Just done a new search & the plant I have may well be Schlumbergera truncata.

No, I am right. They belong to the cactus family. They live in tropical areas but they are true cacti.
They grow as epiphytes on the branches of trees. Epiphyllums are the same - but they are true cacti.

Sorry, Hywel, I should have known better than to argue with you over Cacti!

lol. It doesn't matter. It looks nothing like a cactus so that's misleading.

It's to do with the arrangement of petals, and the shape of the fruit. It's exactly the same as in the desert cacti, - so it belongs to the same family.