Fishbone cactus: no flowers
Why will it not flower?
On fishbone cactus, the likeliest cause is not enough light. Foliage healthy but dark green and slightly stretched.
- 1Not enough light
Ranked here because it will live at medium light but needs bright-indirect to bloom.
How to tell. Foliage healthy but dark green and slightly stretched. Plenty of leaf, no bud.
What to do. Flowering costs more light than surviving does. An east window, or three feet back from a south one. Another epiphytic cactus: bright shade, not desert sun.
- 2Too much nitrogen
How to tell. Lush, large, dark leaves and no buds, on a plant fed regularly with a general houseplant feed.
What to do. Stop feeding for a season, then use a lower-nitrogen feed. Nitrogen buys leaves at the expense of flowers.
- 3Not old enough
How to tell. A young plant, or one recently propagated, that has never flowered at all.
What to do. Wait. Some species take years from cutting to first bloom, and nothing brings that forward.
- 4Never given long enough nights
How to tell. A healthy plant that grows well and simply never buds, in a room where a lamp or television is on in the evening.
What to do. It needs roughly six weeks of fourteen-hour uninterrupted darkness to set buds. A spare room, or a box over it in the evenings.
Why that order, for this plant
The ranking above is not a generic list. It is computed from this species' own record — a watering interval of 7–14 days, a canopy epiphyte origin, a humidity floor of 45%, and a light range from medium to bright-indirect. Change those figures and the order changes with them.
That is the whole point of a per-species page. No flowers on a plant watered every three days and no flowers on one watered every three weeks almost never have the same cause, and a list that ranks them identically is worth nothing to either owner. You can check the reasoning against the care fields on the species entry, which is where these numbers come from.
No percentages appear on this page. We have not run a grower survey, and a confident-sounding figure with no dataset behind it is worse than none. Order and distinguishing tests are what we can honestly give.
Other problems recorded for this species
- Root rot act today
- Leggy growth monitor
Also for this species
Full care entry with light, watering and soil. How to propagate it. Toxicity to cats and to dogs.
Sources
- Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Plants of the World Online — Selenicereus anthonyanus Accepted name and family. Checked 2026-09-12.
- ASPCA Animal Poison Control — Selenicereus anthonyanus Relevant if a damaged plant is being chewed rather than merely ailing.
- This database's own care record for Selenicereus anthonyanus — the watering, humidity and light figures the ranking is derived from.
Compiled and edited by Tony Valcarcel · 2026-09-12
Cause ordering is derived from this species' recorded care requirements, and the
derivation is stated above so you can disagree with it. It is not a diagnosis, and
a plant can have two problems at once. How this is sourced.