Pilosocereus odilensis | Odil's blue cactus
€7,95
🌱 Morphology
Columnar cactus with an arborescent habit, featuring erect stems of a glaucous blue color, generally branching with age. It can reach several meters in its habitat. It presents deep, well-defined ribs, traversed longitudinally by grooves that accentuate its sculptural appearance. The areoles are rounded, white, and slightly woolly. The radial spines are thin, straight, and white, while the central ones acquire reddish-brown tones, especially toward the apex. The combination of the bluish epidermis, light spines, and white wool provides one of the most attractive contrasts in the Pilosocereus genus. In cultivation, it can produce numerous basal shoots and form clusters of bluish stems.
🌍 Distribution, habitat, and family
Species from Brazil, associated with warm and dry xerophilic vegetation environments. Its natural habitat corresponds to regions with marked seasonality, where dry periods condition its growth. It belongs to the Cactaceae family and the Pilosocereus genus, characterized by its columnar stems and the presence of woolly areoles, especially developed in fertile regions.
❄️ Temperature · USDA Zone 10a
It tolerates minimum temperatures down to −1 ºC in dry conditions and with well-acclimated specimens, although it is preferable to grow it above 5–8 ºC during the winter. Humid cold should be avoided especially.
☀️ Lighting
It requires direct sun and very intense lighting to maintain its glaucous blue coloration and develop compact spination. During active growth, a DLI PAR of 20–30 mol·m⁻²·day⁻¹ is recommended as a reference.
💧 Growth cycle and watering
Winter rest. During the cold period, it is kept practically dry. In spring and summer, deep and spaced waterings are recommended, allowing the substrate to dry completely before watering again. In warm environments, it may maintain some activity throughout much of the year, but excess root moisture should always be avoided.
🌸 Flowering
The flowers develop in the fertile areoles of the upper part of the stems, accompanied by abundant whitish wool. They are creamy-white in tone, tubular to infundibuliform in shape, and mainly nocturnal. The fruits are fleshy and, upon ripening, acquire reddish or purplish hues, contrasting with the glaucous epidermis of the stems.
🌿 Nutrition
During the active growth period, a fertilizer with a high content of assimilable calcium and low nitrogen levels, such as Desert CHOICE® Cactaceae, is recommended, applied once a month when watering. Before flowering, it can be supplemented with Desert CHOICE® Flowering.
This is an inimitable xerophyte grown in Madrid in a technological square pot with the substrate activated with mycorrhizal fungi
9x9 cm and 13x13 cm pot
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