Peruvian Torch cutting of 10 to 12 cm
What lands on your table is a 10 to 12 centimetre section of column, freshly cut and rootless. It is thick enough to root on its own and short enough to sit on a windowsill. Count the ribs and you will usually get to six or eight; they carry round areoles with golden-brown spines, still short on young pieces like this. The skin wears a matt blue-green bloom that rubs off easily and does not come back, so handle the cutting by its cut edge. Beyond that, the usual cactus caveat applies: thickness, colour and spine cover vary from plant to plant, so the photo is an impression rather than a specification.
Botanists now file the species as Echinopsis peruviana, sharing its group with the San Pedro. It belongs to the Peruvian highlands and most likely to a strip of Bolivia next door, although centuries of cultivation and trade have made that origin impossible to trace with certainty. Left to grow freely, the plant branches into a shrub of two and a half to five metres and opens yellowish flowers at the arm tips that run to more than twenty centimetres in length. Our own figures put growth at some 30 centimetres a year in good conditions, brisk for a cactus, and on a short piece like this the difference shows within a single season.
Rooting in four steps
- Close the cut surface first: stand the piece upright somewhere warm and dry, away from fierce sun, for one to three weeks.
- Fill a pot of around twelve centimetres with a gritty cactus mix and push the cutting a few centimetres into it. Keep everything bone dry.
- Still no water. Roots usually form within four to six weeks, a little sooner in a warm summer month than in autumn.
- Only once roots are there do you give the first small drink. After that let the pot dry out completely between waterings.
If the base discolours and feels soft, rot has set in. Cut back to firm, healthy tissue, let the new surface callus and try again.
Short or long: which to choose
This size is the way in. It costs the least, it roots in a small pot, and you can easily stand two or three side by side to see which takes best. The trade-off is time: it will be a while before you have a real column, whereas a cutting of 25 to 30 cm looks like a plant from day one. If you would rather skip the rooting stage altogether, pick the rooted Peruvian Torch in a pot, stocked in two sizes.
Position and water
The more light it gets, the firmer the column stays; a south window is ideal and a summer outdoors does it good. Water by feel rather than by schedule: push a finger into the pot and water only when the soil is dry through, which works out at roughly twice a month. A saucer left full of water is the quickest way to lose the plant. From November on it can stand cool and almost dry, with a mouthful of water a month at most. If roots fill the pot in spring, repot and leave it a week before the first watering.
Avalon Magic Plants carries the Peruvian Torch as a longer cutting of 25 to 30 cm, as a rooted plant in a pot and as seed. The same category holds San Pedro, Bolivian Torch, the monstrosus forms, Cuzco and Macrogonus. Shipping is always in discreet packaging.
