I finally lost it when my neighbor called her cactus a 'low light plant'

She moved it to a dark corner because she heard cacti are easy, and now it's all stretched out and pale. That's etiolation, people, and it's a clear sign the plant is STARVING for sun. I saw the exact same thing happen at the local garden center last month, where they had a whole rack of succulents labeled for shade. These are desert plants, they need direct light for at least 6 hours a day. How do so many plant lovers still get this basic fact wrong? Has anyone else had to rescue a friend's sun-starved cactus?

4 comments

4 Comments

sean_barnes2413d agoMost Upvoted

Ugh, that drives me up the wall. My sister did the same thing with an aloe, stuck it on a bookshelf far from any window. It grew this long, floppy stem reaching for nothing. I had to slowly rehab it on my porch over a summer, moving it an inch closer to the edge each day. It's a full time job fixing other people's plant crimes. Right, @miastone?

matthew8781mo ago

I've had to do that rescue. Move it to a sunny spot slowly so it doesn't get sunburned.

simonk981mo ago

Yeah, that slow move is key. I scorched a fiddle leaf fig once by getting impatient and shifting it from a dark corner right to a south window. The leaves got these crispy brown spots in like two days. Now I inch things over a week or two, even if it feels silly.

miastone1mo ago

Oh man, @matthew878, I think you meant to reply to simonk98, not yourself. (Easy to do on this app, honestly.) But yeah, that slow move is so important.