buds not opening

[malospine]

this plant never opens the flowers buds and they remain closed on the plant for a long time, last year I took some of them and grafted



these are the results after 8 months



it is flowering

[Carlo & Daniele]

nice!
it's quite common with astrophytum cultivars, we noticed too taht in caase of kikko the flower buds turn into offsets and if you graft them they turn in a kikko form, even if the motherplant is not kikko.
This is maybe the reason because some kikko obtained with this propagation are not able to transfer a good genetic.
With fukuryu we noticed also that when there are these buds-offsets the motherplant doesn't flower, but if they are grafted on another stock they develop true flowers in a short time.
Any experience about it?