‘Flying Saucer’ stops traffic with spectacular flower display

Echinopsis ‘Flying Saucer’ is the first one to kick off this year’s cactus bloom season. As always, it made a spectacular entrance. There’s nothing modest or reserved about it. It’s as splashy as it gets.

Since daytime temperatures have been on the cool side all week, the flowers have lasted much longer than usual. As I’m writing this, we’re on day 4, and the flowers are just now starting to fade; I expect them to be completely spent by tomorrow. Four days is a new record for me. On a hot summer day, the flowers sometimes don’t even last until evening.

Day 1, March 31

I was hoping the flowers would open up before Loree danger garden Bohl went back to Portland, and they did:

Day 2, April 1

On day 2, the flowers were a lighter pink than on day 1. This is the typical color for ‘Flying Saucer’.

Day 3, April 2

On day 3, the flowers were a darker pink again. The petals were beginning to look a bit tired.

Day 4, April 3

The petals looked much rougher now, but the flowers were still open. I wonder if this means they weren’t pollinated. In other words, would pollinated flowers have closed earlier?

This is only the first wave. Like most echinopsis, ‘Flying Saucer’ blooms multiple times. Last year, it put out four flushes of flowers.

Here’s a short video that shows ‘Flying Saucer’ from multiple angles:

Click Watch on YouTube and select the highest resolution your bandwidth allows.

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I often joke that the flowers of ‘Flying Saucer’ are so spectacular that they stop traffic. I didn’t see that happen, but my daughter overheard two passers-by who had stopped on the sidewalk to look at the flowers. “It’s so big,” one of them said. “It really does look like a flying saucer.” Right on!

© Gerhard Bock, 2025. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.