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Introduced so early, and at once finding great favour as a curious and beautiful flowering plant, E. truncatum has been, and is still, extensively cultivated, and numerous varieties of it have, as a consequence, originated in English gardens.
It is now about a century since some of the most beautiful of Cactaceous plants came into cultivation in this country, and amongst them was the plant now known as E. truncatum, but then called Cactus Epiphyllum; the name Cactus being used in a generic sense, and not, as now, merely as a general term for the Natural Order.
It was here that Gardner, when travelling in South America, found E. truncatum growing in great luxuriance, and along with it the species known as E. Russellianum, which he sent to the Duke of Bedford's garden, at Woburn, in 1839. These two species are the only ones now recognised by botanists, all the other cultivated kinds being either varieties of, or crosses raised from, them.
This species flowers rather later in the year than E. truncatum, and may be had in blossom so late as the month of May or June. There are several varieties of it which have either larger and darker, or smaller and variously tinted flowers. Both the species will cross with each other, and probably many of the varieties enumerated by nurserymen have been obtained in this way.
The branchlets are exactly the same as those of E. truncatum, but the flowers are not like Epiphyllum at all, resembling rather those of Cereus or Phyllocactus. They are brilliant scarlet in colour, shaded with violet. Tube rosy-violet; petals dark red. Tube and base of petals white, rest salmon-red, shaded with purple. Tube and base of petals white; tips of petals carmine.
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