Epiphyllum update

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It seems my plant is probably Epiphyllum oxypetalum, which is unusual compared to other Epiphyllum sp. in that it is supposed to be a large lanky plant.

So the long branches with nothing but roots are normal, they're for connecting the plant to tree trunks which certainly makes sense. The species does grow long stems which only sprout "leaves" once they reach a certain length.



A healthy Epiphyllum oxypetalum. I guess the flowers make it worth it.
(Photo by Gagan, used under CC license from commons.wikimedia.org

I suppose going forward I should repot, give it more light (full morning to dappled afternoon), and start staking the branches

Epiphyllum

All Andrew's Plants has moved to AllAndrewsPlants.wordpress.com

You can find this post here on my new site for the full post and to leave comments.

Going through my list of tropical plants that look like crap (so far Peperomia obtusifolia & Syngonium podophyllum and an Aglaonema 'Emerald Queen' which had tufts of leaves at the tips of long sprawling woody stems - it also had bugs so we decided it wasn't worth saving) was inevitably going to get me to this plant, one way or another.



This is the best looking section.

It is either an Epiphyllum or something closely related. I'm going off leaves here alone as I've never seen it flower. The leaves are nothing to get excited about either.



Dry?

I suspect that the plant is not getting enough light, not getting enough water, and likely has terrible soil.



Long round stems give the whole plant a very sparse look. The stem begins to flatted towards the end.

The plant is very sparse. Unlike many Epiphyllum pictures I've seen this seems to prefer to send out longer round stems with the "leaf-like" stems coming from those rather than the leafy stems coming from the pot or shorter round branches near the soil (effectively hidden by the flat stems). The flat stems are short. The plant also sends out long shoots which seem only to have aerial roots on them?



There's nothing but roots all along this stem. It's over 3' long (and may have kept growing if it hadn't dried out at the tip).

So... I'm not even sure where to start here. The soil's crappy so it needs to be repotted. At least the one decent looking branch does. There's another branch that could be cut back to make a decent looking second section and I've got another branch that apparently broke a while ago and was just hanging on by a tiny fiber. The part pictured above that looks good but on that long stem... Will that stem root? Could I just root that whole bit? And what's the deal with the stems with nothing but roots? Can I get rid of them? For soil well drained but fairly rich is what I'm reading online - regular potting soil + extra perlite? Bark?