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About 6 weeks ago I mail-ordered a Rebutia pulchella. It arrived bare-root, as a small cluster with a main plant and seven small pups of varying sizes. I potted it in my standard mix, which is perlite, cactus soil and coconut fiber and didn't water until I saw evidence that the plant was growing.

Everything seemed fine until this morning, when I noticed that one of the offsets looked funny. I pulled at it and realized it was nothing more than a dried out husk which came off in my hand. This scared me, so I pulled the entire cluster from the pot. I found that it has very few roots. The roots that exist look healthy, and there is no evidence of pests. The remaining offsets are all attached to the mother plant by turgid, light green stems as I would expect.

I just decided to treat it as basically an unrooted cutting. I cleaned out the pot, filled it with clean mix and set the cluster on top, hoping that more roots will grow, before I water it. Any thoughts about why the one pup dried out? Will the plant be able to survive and support all of the offsets for a few weeks or until I feel I can water it safely?

Thank you so much!

The pup may have become detached. Or perhaps just sacrificed in the stress of the move. Sounds like the rest of the plant is OK. Give it extra shade for a few weeks until you are comfortable watering again. If it really has very few roots, cram them into a small pot and plan on moving it again next year.

Also if you can get some flat sandstone make a v shape with the pland potted in the V the roots will spread quickly across the surface of the stone and it will aid drainage.

Thank you! I didn't even think about the pup having become detached, but that's certainly a possibility, either in the shipping or the potting. I'm keeping it warm but mostly shaded for now.

I'm intrigued by the sandstone idea ... is that only for outdoor plants? Do you have a photo of a similar setup so I could get a look at it?

If you take a look at the pictures you can see the sandstone rocks poking out, I have drawn in red lines to highlight the direction/angle. Basically these chunks of stone run almost to the bottom of the pots coming closer together at the bottom. The plants are sat beween them in the gap. The roots will spead over the surface of the sand stone in search of water. The sand stone will act as a reservoir as it soaks up a lot of water so the roots spread over it making them stronger. I woulhave like to show you the roots but I can moved the ario its kinda happy and dont want to disturb it and the heliosa I have recently potted so it will need time before I could pull it out for photos. Next time I use this technique I will take pictures. I have got a ill looking astrophytum capricorne senelis who's roots are fairly poor so will do a mini picture documentary and will get some before and after pictures of the roots.