sunburned cactus flesh-any value?

[dendro]

I moved some potted pachs to rearrange the cover of my water tank. It got dark, and I forgot I had moved them into the full sun. One of them, I even laid down horizontal. One snapped at the base, fell over.

The next day was SUNNY. In the morning, I forgot the cacti. When I revisited them at sunset,  two of the cacti were burned yellow, the entire side, shrunken and oozing. Are the alks on the sunburned parts gone? Or can I trim and freeze, and brew to good effect?

[JRL]

Cactus alkaloids are remarkably stable. Should be no problem.

[dendro]

Thanks JRL for the fragrance, I can smell the difference. So maybe the one pach that didn't break, that is still rooted in the pot, but badly sunburned---should I try to nurse it back to health? Or just chop and regrow from base?

[Stonehenge]

I would give them a chance to recover before doing anything drastic. Like JRL said, the actives aren't going to be hurt. But, if you chop them they can't grow anymore or make any new goodies. They will always have a burned area, from what you describe, but they may very well recover and start growing again. I found that plants need at least a week and often longer to acclimate to a lot of light so break them in slowly. The one that snapped off, you could root the broken part after the end dries. The stump should put out pups and keep growing.

[JRL]

Yeah it's pretty hard to to get these suckers to stop growing. I have only killed a handful out of the hundreds I have grown.

[dendro]

Yeah cooll thanks you guys, that's good to know, I'm pretty sure this one would live on, but it has gotten some black areas in one burned place, among some strange orange colors I haven't seen before. This one is pretty tall tho, over three feet, and it's in a small pot, so I may just chop it and regrow the base.