Grafting advantures with lophophora , pereskiopsis, orange rot a.o. [photo heavy]

First attempts on pere, successful, august 08

the echinopsis [pachanoi KK339] on the left came to become this!


ok on to lophos + orange rots




looking good, but you can see the burning!

...then problems occur, in all cases after sun burning plus exposure to outside humidity [3 different grafts]





this next one solitary head is another strain, less harmed. this one recovered easily after the first spraying.


and here you can see them recovered and grown, although not still full recovered from the orange markings: they still have slight orange marks at this pic.



I constantly used these as mother plants so far to graft more pups [the pups were all upside down anyways as the upper part was totally damaged]. No problem so far with further infections. Remaining orange scars eventually faded to brown and healed. Have exposed almost all of them to enough random rain this automn!

I generall agree with kada that this is generally reversible with dry atmosphere and bright sunlight but when it gets worse, I am afraid to say it's 'spray or lose it'. And I don't like to use chemicals to any of my plants, but I did in this occasion when I was hopeless and it worked. I will try to use that sulphur thing you all say... One of them didn't make it due to pereskipsis failure [?!?] but I regrafted all pups thus made several other plants [on small echinopsis, here's a recent photo].



it's on relatively slow growing echinopsis [a la] oxygona. advantage is that you always have ready to plant pups to graft on, as these pups produce roots while on the plant, in the air!

this next is the solitary less infected lopho from previously, the 'other' strain... This doesn't pup so much it seems


and this is the one still alive on pere

Damn, that orange rot looks nasty. Cryptocarpa has done some fascinating work that seems to suggest that at least some orange rot cases stem from infected graft unions. However, I've also had limited success controlling orange rot with topical applications of copper fungicide, which says to me that the infection can also start on the surface of the plant. Your experience with sunburn followed by high humidity suggests that as soon as the skin is compromised, infection can find its way in with identical results.

At any rate, this is definitely an area worthy of further study, if only to figure out how we can best minimise the losses to our prized cacti. Maybe if we can identify the pathogen responsible for this we can work out how best to treat it.

So... what's the consensus. Is Fusarium responsible for all this misery?

Consensus, IMO

1) Sterilizations while grafting
2) Care when taking pups / skin is damaged / flesh is exposed, especially in a bad time like when with high humidity. Prevention might be key, but I am not so preventive myself.
3) Spray with toxic antifungals when damage is of a larger scale and/or plant valueable.
4) Early measures, don't let it spread cause it can be fatal in a smaller plant. Quarantine maybe the infected plants and place in dry place, even a fan+resistor heater could work....

5) We might form a list of species that seem more vulnerable to this....

All in all I don't think it's so much of a danger... I think it's a threat to smaller and young scions, I think older grafts/plants are more hardy and can survive it... but yeah, that crypto photo is also a big questionmark....

[quote="mutant"]
the echinopsis [pachanoi KK339] on the left came to become this!


haha i love this. quite humorous. fantastic.
i can't believe that pereskiopsis can support that Tricho! LOL

I sure love nature. what kind of photos? start up a thread and share you stuff

welcome to the forums

My PC has a 'cacti-at-sunset-in-desert' screensaver Hi Susan, everyone here loves some sort of nature