October 2025 Mini Show

Monsters  by Buck Hemenway

Every so often, Mother Nature gets it wrong, or different, or just messes up. We are constantly reminded by the presenters at our meetings, that there is never one exact way for a plant to look. Variability of the genetic code when one plant’s pollen is introduced to another plant is what makes them interesting and different.

Occasionally, Mom gets wild with her design and gives us really different variations on the norm.

Many plant lovers and scientists consider crested, monstrose and other genetic differences to be too far from normal and discard those from the seed batches. Cactus and succulent people are not of that mind. The crazier the deviation from normal… the better for us.

So, in this month, we will get to look at the wildest genetic weirdness that Mom can produce.

We have lumped all three basic deviations into the same basket. Plants can be entered in the Mini-Show if they exhibit crested, monstrose, or variegated leaves and or stems. The plant must have at least 30% of the deviant form to qualify for the show. Judging this miasma is not a simple task, but viewing it is always an exciting experience.

In particular, crested and monstrose plants have a much harder time growing than normal ones. Usually, plants grow from the tips of their branches. New little special cells are always forming at the very tip or apical growing point or meristem and that’s what causes a plant to get bigger. Just imagine then that if instead of one apical point at the tip of each stem, you had a line (the crest) maybe 15 inches long that served the same purpose. It would be much harder to grow when the roots must supply energy to that whole crest instead of a few branches.

Monstrose growth is even worse. The plant can’t decide where its growing point is and actually creates new growing points all over the plant. That’s why many monstrose cacti for example, never get spines and some never bloom. It’s because every areole has decided to become the apical growing point and as such has no time or energy for normal functions such as spines and flowers.

Variegated growth brings its own hazards to normal growth. Much variegation is supplied courtesy of a plant virus. Whether or not it is virus caused, it is obvious that the variegated part of the plant does not have as much green (chlorophyll) in it as the non-variegated part. That makes most variegated plants much slower growing than their healthy cousins and more sensitive to the sun. We should remember that some plants are variegated as a normal growing form.

In general, the Monsters are less hardy than their normal counterparts. They get the same pests and tend to have a more difficult time with them.

Usually, a plant will contain abnormal and normal growth. In many cases a crested plant will send enough “normals” to cause them to outstrip the crest and soon, it will not be visible. The normal growth will always be more vigorous than the abnormal. It is recommended that one cut the normal growth off of a Monster, so that the abnormal growth persists and is what one sees.There seems to be no word in the English language as monstrose. We would write Pachycereus schottii monstrosus as the proper binomial name of the Totem Pole cactus in the pseudo-latin. The term monstrose is commonly used to describe the condition defined by monstrosus. Likewise, “cristata” is used to define the crested stated in a binomial and “variegata” for a variegate.