Hello,
I have this 20 year old bishop's cap that started to look not its usually self. It began tipping over so I dug around it to reveal the part that is beneath the soil and I'm worried it may be rotting. I've repotted it in the past. It's been in this current pot for about 4 years. Is there any way to save it if it is rotting??
You cut above the rot leave it for a week to callous and then repot.
But i'd wait for another reply since i don't have any experience if it roots from a cutting.
There are more cacti in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
One of the few cactus lovers in Lebanon (zone 11a)
Is it firm or soft? Corking around the base is normal for Astrophytum, and the tipping may be simple physics - it looks to be very top heavy. Astrophytum cuttings may be extremely stubborn to root, I would resort to that only as an emergency.
jfabiao wrote:Is it firm or soft? Corking around the base is normal for Astrophytum, and the tipping may be simple physics - it looks to be very top heavy. Astrophytum cuttings may be extremely stubborn to root, I would resort to that only as an emergency.
The bottom half that's darker in coloration doesn't feel as though it's very fleshy on the inside. Almost like a hollow kind of feel.
I wonder how your cactus is doing. I have lost a big Astrophytum cactus this spring, which was not plumping up, when the other plants were doing so.
I left it in the ground a while, thinking, that it was just a little late in "waking up". Well, nothing happened. Then, when I dug it up, I noticed, that the roots had gone. The plant also felt too light. At that point I cut into the stem and it was almost hollow. There was nothing left for me to do, except to throw the cactus in the trash. Have you taken a look at the roots of your plant? If it is a rot, it probably has already worked its way up all the way to the top and the plant is a goner. If there are no roots, the only way to figure out what is wrong is to cut off the discolored (hollow?) part and check, what the stem looks like above that point.
