Christmas vs Thanksgiving Cactus: How to Tell Them Apart

The quick check: look at the segment edges

Hold one of the flat green pieces up and look at its sides. Those pieces are stems, not leaves: Clemson Extension calls them phylloclades and says they do the work leaves would.

• Pointed teeth, like little hooks or claws: Thanksgiving cactus. Clemson counts 2 to 4 saw-toothed points along each segment, Purdue Extension 2 to 4 pointy teeth, and Iowa State Extension 2 to 4 teeth that point upward. Illinois Extension says the teeth look like hooks or claws, which is why it is also sold as crab cactus.
• Rounded, scalloped edges: Christmas cactus. Clemson says the edges are more rounded, Purdue and Iowa State call them scalloped, and NC State Extension’s plant toolbox describes 2 or 3 rounded notches with no points.
• Very rounded edges with bristles at the tips: Easter cactus. Iowa State says the segments are smoother, with 4 to 6 slight ripples and brownish bristles at the tips. It blooms in spring, so it is rarely the plant in question at the holidays.

If your plant has some of each, it may be a hybrid. Iowa State says many cultivars are crosses, some closer to one parent and some in between.

More on Christmas cacti

• Christmas cactus care — light, water, feeding, leaf color, repotting, and when a pot goes outside in your zone
• Christmas vs Thanksgiving Cactus: How to Tell Them Apart — this page
• How to Get a Christmas Cactus to Bloom, and Keep the Buds
• Christmas Cactus Propagation: Rooting Cuttings Step by Step
• ZIP code zone finder — your exact USDA zone, to read the tables on these pages against

Side by side

“—” means none of the sources we read gives an anther color for the Easter cactus.

Check the flowers, if it is blooming

The anthers are the small pollen-bearing tips at the center of the flower. Clemson Extension and Illinois Extension both say they are yellow on a Thanksgiving cactus and purplish-brown on a Christmas cactus. NC State Extension’s Beaufort County office uses the same test, and gives purple to brown.

How the flowers hang helps too. UC Master Gardeners of Sacramento County say Thanksgiving cactus flowers are held level or tipped upward, while the true Christmas cactus carries hot pink flowers that hang down. NC State’s plant toolbox says the Thanksgiving cactus flowers do not hang. Both are tubular, Illinois says; the Easter cactus flower is star-shaped.

The bloom date is the weakest clue

Thanksgiving here means the US holiday, the fourth Thursday of November. Clemson Extension says that under normal fall nights a Thanksgiving cactus flowers near Thanksgiving, about a month before a Christmas cactus. University of Wisconsin–Madison Extension says hybrids between the two bloom in between.

But the date moves with the room. Illinois Extension says the plants can be forced to bloom outside their usual time, and UGA’s Paulding County office says a plant with rounded Christmas cactus segments that blooms early is responding to its conditions: the sooner it gets cool nights and long dark periods, the sooner it flowers. Wisconsin says a plant bought in bloom for Christmas, from a greenhouse, often blooms in November every year after, because a commercial grower timed that first bloom with lights and dark cloth. The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service puts it plainly: a plant that blooms in November gets called a Thanksgiving cactus, and one that blooms around the end of the year a Christmas cactus, whatever it really is.

To change when yours blooms, see how to get a Christmas cactus to bloom.

Which one you probably have

Iowa State Extension says the Thanksgiving cactus is the most familiar holiday cactus and that most plants sold as Christmas cactus are really Thanksgiving cactus or hybrids; Illinois Extension and NC State Extension’s Beaufort County office say the same. Clemson says that because of its bloom time it is the one usually for sale in the holiday season, and Beaufort County says blooming a month earlier makes it the better seller for Christmas.

The true Christmas cactus is itself a cross. Iowa State says it is a hybrid of S. russelliana and S. truncata made in England about 150 years ago, and NC State says William Buckley made it at the Rollisson Nurseries in the 1840s, which is where the name buckleyi comes from.

Does it change the care?

Not for the two fall bloomers. UGA’s Paulding County office says they require the same care, and Iowa State says all three holiday cacti need similar growing conditions. The Christmas cactus care page covers both.

The Easter cactus is the exception, in how it blooms. Iowa State says it needs a more exact sequence of long nights and then a cooler spell in fall before it will bloom in spring, and NC State says it does not form buds until February or March, as days lengthen, and that it drops segments if it is overwatered or underwatered.

What we could not find

We found no Texas A&M or LSU AgCenter source on holiday cacti that we could read. Southern advice on this page comes from Clemson, UF/IFAS, UGA’s Paulding County office, the University of Arkansas and NC State.