Recently these little conical yellow bumps began to grow from an arm on one of my San Pedro cacti, what are these? Are these the beginnings of roots? Something else?

What's to be done here?

-eg

Looks like aerial roots

I see, any ideas as to why they are forming, or what the best coarse of action to take with this arm would be?

Should I chop it up, let the ends scab over, and plant them?

There's over 3 feet of cacti arm, and I'm really not sure what to do with it...

-eg

It's growing pseudopodia and will soon run away!

Like boogerz says, it's rooting. This tends to happen when the stems are shaded and touching something, as yours appear to be. Kind of makes sense if you think about it. Overall the plant looks like it would appreciate a bit more light.

If you do take cuttings, they should root more easily. Er, obviously The advantage of taking cuttings is you'll end up with more plants to play with/share.

My light situation is limited, I have a south facing window and the T-5 box, that's it.

Do you think there's decent mescaline content in these etiolated arms?
I mean I've got 3-4 feet of etiolated arm biomass, so I may just extract or brew up the arm...

Someone once described a method of laying the arm in soil on its side, which roots, creating a row of pups springing up...anybody know anything about this method?

-eg

3- 4 feet, even etoliated, should be a decent brew. At least I've heard- never brewed PC before personally.

It looks like the plant is not etoliated where the box light is, so you might want to cut it and root the cuttings whenever it gets taller than the lights. The log style rooting does work, and with your situation, pups at the soil level would be ideal. You just cut it into smaller pieces and plant them half out of the soil, root side down in this case.

How often do you water that plant? The part by the light looks like it might be a little dehydrated, though it's hard to see in these pics, which would also contribute to aerial roots.

It works and it's very easy. I've had best results with peruvianus, which gives tons of pups although my PC cuttings have only ever been short. I have observed that PC are more reluctant to give multiple pups, though.

Just cut your plants down when they get as tall as the window = easy recipe for regular harvesting.
I now see that the etiolation and rooting occurs where they're taller than the light box. Would it be possible to keep them in the window itself? I get the feeling the plants might prefer that.

Another idea might be to mount the light higher up on the wall, next to the etiolated portion, at least for a time.

Also I concur on the dehydration. These things can take generous watering, I sometimes even water mine on sunny days in the winter. They're on a south-facing windowsill (sunniest window of the house), above a radiator.


I have no practicable way of knowing the mescaline content of your cactus at present. I'd say get some bridgesii and peruvianus just to be sure, if you're thinking of making a brew. IMO, there's no hurry (or there shouldn't be).

Thank you for the information, it is much appreciated!

I know with pachanoi it can be a gamble, there's pachanoi "predominant cultivar" or "PC", then there's the "pachanot" which is a weak hybrid of some sort, I guess hair on the base of the flower is some indication of what you have, but I decided to just test my cactus the old fashion way and abandoned trying to distinguish it by any other way. I ate about 1.7 feet of etiolated arm biomass like a carrot, it was de-spined but not de-cored, fairly intense, residual effects did not fade for 48 hours, no question that this is an active cacti.


The etiolation is all above the box, though one cacti went from 7 ribs to 5, that cactus looks great from the front but today I found that the back was in horrible condition! Fuck! I wish I had noticed this sooner! (Pictured below)

-eg

Here's pics of the arm cacti, the arm is making a brake for it, trying to escape out the window...

-eg

I'm for sure goin to root that arm now, specially after seeing that one of my cacti was horrible on the side that's not visible!

I do need to water more, there was a mold issue once so I cut back, but yeah, they need more water...


I want to plant half the arm on its side and chop the other half into a few up right cacti...

-eg