Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The common name for Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti is a puzzle as they sure don’t look like cacti. They don’t have any prickly spines, and Instead of the dry desert they live in tropical rain forests in Brazil, and they’re epiphytes living in decayed leaf litter in trees. As such, they’re finicky about water and light conditions which may be hard to replicate in South Carolina. Thanksgiving cacti have a more robust so-called root system and their stems are stronger than true Christmas cacti. If you go shopping for a Thanksgiving or Christmas cactus, you’ll now find a hybrid of the two, which has a longer flowering period so you have blooms on both holidays. Their leaves are the giveaway, true Christmas cacti have so-called leaves with smooth edges.
The difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti

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