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In fact, if the atmosphere in which the plants are placed be kept a little moist, it will not be necessary to water them till signs of fresh growth are perceived. For Epiphyllums and Rhipsalis, water will be required earlier than this; but even they are best left for a few days without water, after they have been repotted.
Some of the kinds thrive best when grafted on to a thin-stemmed Cereus. Treated in this way, R. sarmentacea makes 6 in. of growth in a season; whereas, on its own roots it would take about five years to grow as much. The following is a selection of the species cultivated in gardens. The genus Lepismium is now included in Rhipsalis.
Thrips attack Phyllocactus, Rhipsalis, and Epiphyllum, especially when the plants are grown in less shade, or in a higher temperature, than is good for them. Fumigation with tobacco, dipping in a strong solution of tobacco, or sponging with a mixture of soap and water, are either of them effectual when applied to plants infested with thrips.
Again, in the Cactuses themselves we have curious cases of plant mimicry; as, for instance, the Rhipsalis, which looks like a bunch of Mistletoe, and the Pereskia, the leaves and habit of which are more like what belong to, say, the Gooseberry family than to a form of Cactus.
From this we descend through a multitude of various shapes and sizes to the tiny tufted Mamillarias, no larger than a lady's thimble, or the creeping Rhipsalis, which lies along the hard ground on which it grows, and looks like hairy caterpillars. In form, the variety is very remarkable.
For Epiphyllums and Rhipsalis, both of which are epiphytal naturally, but which are found to thrive best in pots in our houses, a mixture of equal parts of peat and loam with sand and brick rubble in the same proportion as before recommended, will be found most suitable. Leaf mould is sometimes used for these plants; but unless really good it is best left out of the soil.
EPIPHYLLUM. Stem flattened, jointed; joints short; flowers from the apices of the joints; calyx tube short; petals irregular, almost bilabiate. Tribe II. Calyx-tube not produced beyond the Ovary. Stem branching, jointed. RHIPSALIS. Stem thin and rounded, angular, or flattened, bearing tufts of hair when young; flowers small; petals spreading; ovary smooth; fruit a small pea-like berry.
Seeds of Rhipsalis ripen freely, and these, if sown on sandy soil, and placed on a shelf in a warm house, germinate in a few days.
About thirty species of Rhipsalis are known, most of them more peculiar than ornamental, although everyone is in some way interesting. They are remarkable for the great variety in form and habit presented by the different kinds, some of them much less resembling Cactuses than other plants.
But here, as in Demerara, the trees are left standing about in cane-pieces and pastures to decay into awful and fantastic shapes, with prickly spurs and board-walls of roots, high enough to make a house among them simply by roofing them in; and a flat crown of boughs, some seventy or eighty feet above the ground, each bough as big as an average English tree, from which dangles a whole world, of lianes, matapalos, orchids, wild pines with long air-roots or gray beards; and last, but not least, that strange and lovely parasite, the Rhipsalis cassytha, which you mistake first for a plume of green sea-weed, or a tress of Mermaid's hair which has got up there by mischance, and then for some delicate kind of pendent mistletoe; till you are told, to your astonishment, that it is an abnormal form of Cactus a family which it resembles, save in its tiny flowers and fruit, no more than it resembles the Ceiba-tree on which it grows; and told, too, that, strangely enough, it has been discovered in Angola the only species of the Cactus tribe in the Old World.
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