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Epiphyllum Guatemalense Monstrosa Curly Sue Locks Plant
Packet contains 1x well established bare rooted plant!
These are potted plants grown from cuttings which are exact clones and I do this by placing several well calloused cuttings into each 100mm pot then leaving them for several months to send down roots and harden off.
I had originally planned on selling individual cuttings for a lower price but I wasn’t happy with the arrival quality when I ran extensive test shipping trials. I always test ship every product with a doubled transit time long before I ever consider selling it to the public to make sure what you receive is of an acceptable quality even if Australia post completely stuffs up the delivery. Unfortunately with these guys I just wasn’t totally happy.
Selling them this way as a few plants per pot takes me much more time and costs you a couple bucks extra, but you also get well established little plants that will give you a much higher success rate compared to buying fresh unrooted cuttings from other folks.
On arrival place the bare rooted plants into a nice sandy well draining soil mix in a warm sheltered shady position and don’t water them for a couple weeks. This helps prevents any transit damage from rotting. After that you can gradually move them out into full sun and from then onwards they are as tough as old boots.
The first new growth is often straight and frilly, but after those first few leaves the rest comes out very curled and twisted and it looks cool as can be!
The plant is commonly known as Curly Sue, Curly locks, Epiphyllum monstrosa, Epiphyllum hookeri subspecies guatemalense, Epiphyllum guatemalense monstrosa Curly Sue, Epiphyllum guatemalense monstrosa Curly Locks, Monstrose Epiphyllum, Monstrose orchid cactus, Monstrose Jungle Cactus and Guatemalan Orchid Cactus.
When the plant has filled the pot with roots it will then start to flower and after that comes the tasty little mini-dragonfruit looking berries.
While on the subject of flowers I better point out the size. These are small and dainty, maybe ~4cm wide and ~8cm long.
They are NOT “3inch by 6inch” as pretty much every other plant seller has incorrectly copy pasted and this is a great example of why you should really be growing the plants you are selling to avoid disappointing or accidentally ripping-off your customers. They also look nothing like the tiny Rhypsalis or huge Epiphyllum hookeri flowers that are commonly shown in other stores product images!
This species has small simple flowers as my pictures show and they are nice enough without the need to add any misleading exaggerations.
The flowers smell nice and are strongly self-fertile meaning they will very reliably set fruit without any assistance, sometimes without even needing to open. The pollen can also be used to pollinate self-sterile dragonfruit at a low rate and other Epiphyllum at a medium to high rate of success.
The fruit this one produces is the size of an extra large olive and the flesh tastes really nice. Despite what other folks will tell you it is NOT “sweet sour and juicy” either.
It is a pink and green skinned white fleshed fruit with large soft seeds that are eaten, and it has a tasty savoury sesame seed and nuts flavour.
I really like them and they make a great addition to a salad or served with salty meats, but they are not a sweet tropical fruit sort of thing others will tell you and they do NOT taste like Dragonfruit, at all.
They are unique, and the nuttiness is a really good flavour contrast to heaps of different foods especially cheeses and preserved meats. Looks super cool split and scooped out on a plate and I can see them catching on in classy restaurants given a little HONEST promotion.
I also see room for improvement and hybridisation with the larger fruiting relatives like Selenicereus, Hylocereus and Epiphyllum and I am currently growing out a heap of different crosses.
The very long term goal is to keep this awesome short prostrate curly growth but breed a larger sweet and sour flavoured fruit. Even better breed a large dragonfruit type plant with curly leaves like this fella has. No winners so far and I have a long way to go!
If you plan on going down this road too make sure you remove the male parts of the flower while still immature to prevent self-pollination. As I say, these guys are very strongly self-fertile and just cos you put unrelated pollen on it and got successful fruit set doesn’t mean you successfully crossed and made a fancy new hybrid. Fruit set is easy and reliable regardless of what you do with these guys.
These ones I am selling here are the ideal plant for folks renting or living in the city and a few of these in pots on a windowsill or balcony garden looks super cool I reckon!
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems, no nasties, no problems!
