Im gonna cut you up.

When the top of the peyote button is removed, new shoots appear. does this mean that if i put lots of small cuts on the button that shoots will come out of these?

 

does that answer your question?

 

Not really.

 

Stalk thats a good looking peyote cactus..

 

could you elaborate? it's not peyote, it's san pedro, but they are similar.

 

if i just slice of small patches of the "skin" will pups form in these areas?

 

I don't think so, I think you would need to top the peyote and then you could transplant a few on top of it if you wanted to.
Slicing it sounds like it would just make it regenerate.

 

But surely the cactus can't distinguish between having its head cut off, or its shoulder cut off, as long as i cut into the "fleshy" center?

 

It really all depends on how you do it. You could slice off both it's shoulders and that might produce two over many years...

 

It does take a while, this guy around here just cut off a two foot strip about five years ago... about ten pups generated over the years and each one is now about 4.5 feet high...
He just threw the cutting under a tree.

 

u can just cut the top, and it will grow out of the sides, and the main cacti will get fatter.
u dont need to transplant right?

 

in this picture the san pedro was harvested and 3 pups were transplanted on top, I think...

does2 is right, though...

if you have a fallen san pedro, they can grow a bunch of stalks from it.

 

true.