Ming Thing is what happens when a normally columnar South American cactus decides to abandon all rules of geometry. A monstrose mutation disrupts the usual single growing point of Cereus forbesii, scattering growth points randomly across the plant and producing the dense, contorted, club-shaped stems that make this cultivar so immediately recognizable. The blue-green surface is studded with woolly areoles and short black spines, and the whole plant reads as something between sculpture and geology. It stays compact, reaching perhaps 12 inches tall and 6 inches wide, which makes it perfectly suited to a windowsill or dish garden.

The flowers appear in spring or early summer and are extraordinary in scale relative to the plant's size: large, funnel-shaped, white shading to purple, and night-blooming, opening after dark and likely pollinated by moths in its native Bolivia and Argentina. In cultivation, most people never see them because the plant flowers infrequently and only after dark. What makes Ming Thing worth growing is the form itself. It needs bright indirect light rather than direct afternoon sun, which can scorch the skin, and a very fast-draining cactus mix with extended dry periods between waterings. In zones 9 to 11 it can live outdoors; elsewhere, it belongs in a pot that comes inside before the first frost.