It was November 1962 when I saw my first lobster claw. The plant was remarkably out-of-place. The neighbor who lived across the alley asked me to help carry canned goods. The basement was poorly lit--a few naked light bulbs and the winter light through the welled basement windows. Past the shelves of home canned beans, peas, and tomatoes, sat a lobster claw full of brilliant orangey-red blooms like tiny birds.

Ladislaus Cutak (Cactus Guide, 1956) wrote "It is a bushy plant of graceful arching habit, composed of thin, glossy leaf-like joints up to two inches long. Zygomorphic flowers are extremely beautiful and possess a distinct shape from most other epiphytic cacti. The flower tube is sharply bent upward above the ovary from which petaloid scales arise that have the same color as the true petals at the end of the tube." He added almost with regret, "Zygocactus flowers show a great variation in color, consequently, nearly a hundred forms have been mentioned in early day literature. However...it is difficult to trace their history in these modern times. It is possible that many of the forms have been lost or gone out of circulation."

I do not think Mrs. B. ever visited a 'jungle', but her stories of plants quite caught my imagination. The sill of the window was above my head, back-lit by the winter sun, I knew what it must be like to see them in bloom in a tree far from a dull Midwestern winter.