How to Hand Pollinate a Christmas Cactus

The holiday season receives a flush of color with the blooming of a Christmas cactus. Like Easter and Thanksgiving cacti, these cultivars may produce a stunning number of flowers in such shades as pink and peach. Plant lovers hail Christmas cacti for the ease with which they can be crossbred, in addition to their attractive pigments. Hand pollination can result in scores of beautiful plants grown on the cheap. The process is most effective when cactus flowers are most fecund: the day after they open.

Small paintbrush
Cotton swab

Instructions

- 1
  Assemble a minimum of two different Christmas cactus plants, ideally of different colors.
- 2
  Recognize the plants' reproductive parts. For Schlumbergera x buckleyi, or Christmas cactus, the stigma is crimson in color and protrudes from the plant. The anther is a small lump of yellow -- pollen -- that hangs from the filament, a long, white tubular shape.
- 3
  Look for particularly receptive stigmas. Some plants' stigmas open into a star shape, indicating that their ovaries are ripe.
- 4
  Stroke the anthers of one flower onto another flower's stigma. You may do this on flowers that bloom from the same plant, or you can choose completely separate plants. Rubbing anthers to stigmas transfers the pollen, which instigates the reproductive process.

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