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Updated: August 13, 2024
This species has been employed by the hybridists for the obtaining of new kinds, and some very handsome and distinct varieties have consequently been raised. As well as crossing with other species of Phyllocactus, P. Akermanni has been used in combination with several species of Cereus, good hybrids having been the result.
CEREUS. Stem often long and erect, sometimes scandent, branching, ridged or angular; flowers from the sides of the stem; calyx tube elongated and regular; stamens free. PHYLLOCACTUS. Stem flattened, jointed, and notched; flowers from the sides, large, having long, thin tubes and a regular arrangement of the petals.
It forms a straggling plant about 1 ft. high. Syn. Lepismium Knightii, Cereus Knightii. Mag. 3O78. A small, compact plant, with woody stems, densely covered with little fleshy, conical joints, resembling very closely the leaves of some of the Mesembryanthemums. They are green, with a few red dots, each bearing a very small tuft of the finest hair-like spines.
The cacti of the cereus family showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous.
My garden of thoughts seemed filled with flowers which might properly be likened to the quick-blowing night-blooming cereus that Delusion of Grandeur of all flowering plants that thinks itself prodigal enough if it but unmask its beauty to the moon! Few of my bold fancies, however, were of so fugitive and chaste a splendor. The religious instinct is found in primitive man.
Like E. gibbosus, it does best when grafted on to another kind. We have seen perfect "drum-sticks" formed by grafting a full-grown plant of this on the stem of a Cereus. Stem globose, usually flattened on the top, and divided into eight or nine large ribs or ridges, grey-green in colour.
From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile.
For the genera Cereus, Echinopsis, Echinocactus, Mamillaria, Opuntia, and Melocactus, a moist tropical house is provided, and in April the plants are freely watered at the root, and syringed overhead both morning and afternoon on all bright days. This treatment is continued till the end of July, when syringing is suspended, and the water supplied to the roots gradually reduced.
Clusters of fruit and flowers hung from the drooping branches, and the aroma of a thousand sweet-scented shrubs was wafted upon the night air. We felt its narcotic influence as we rode along. The helianthus bowed its golden head, as if weeping at the absence of its god; and the cereus spread its bell-shaped blossom, joying in the more mellow light of the moon.
They come next to Cereus, and are distinguished as follows: ECHINOPSIS. Stem as in Echinocactus, but the flowers are produced low down from the side of the stem, and the flower tube is long and curved. PILOCEREUS. Stem tall, columnar, bearing long silky hairs as well as spines; flowers in a head on the top of the stem, rarely produced.
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