Trichocereus uyupampensis?

[tripsis]

I bought this from SAB a while back as a KK Trichocereus uyupampensis. I've looked at a few images online and it looks a decent match for the species, but again, it looks like it has T. cuzcoensis traits in it too. Are the two species closely related?

This is mine:

From Trout:

From M S Smith

Opinions?

[solomon]

First thing that sprang to mind when I looked at yours and Trout's was cuzcoensis.

Smith's looks a bit bridgesii influenced to me.

Nice plant by the way

edit: damnit tripsis I was gonna make my 600th post a giveaway

Edited April 12, 2011 by centipede

[GoOnThen]

Who said giveaway

First thing that sprang to mind when I looked at yours and Trout's was cuzcoensis.

Smith's looks a bit bridgesii influenced to me.

I dont see much in the way of cozco in Smiths at all but the others look like cuzcoensis to me but they seem to be holding some color in there older spines.

Cheers

Got

[tripsis]

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I'm hoping someone with some experience with the actual species will be able to shed some light on the matter.

I was going to make my 2000th post a giveaway, but missed it. Don't have much to giveaway these days anyway.

[Evil Genius]

Hi Tripsis, Backeberg described Uyupampensis as a low laying species, usually having nine ribs, shoots of 3,5 centimeter in diameter and 7-9 thin and short spines per areole. Spines are up to 6mm thick and pointing upside and downside. Probably very similar to Trichocereus Bridgesii and coming from the outer peruvian south. Despite usually being a low laying species that might sometimes even hangs, it could easily be mistaken with Trichocereus Bridgesii. My guess is this also applies for Trichocereus Cuzcoensis. Areoles are small, rounded, light brown filthy, The body is thickened at the base of the plant. Flower is up to 16 cm long. the outside of the flower is reddish and the inside is white. Grows in south peru near Uyupampa, 3000 meters. Definately a rare species. I might have pics somewhere but i have to check. Ritter didnt encluded it in his books as he hated Backebergs guts and didnt want to acknowledge anything he described. Its possible that Knize is selling a diffrent Species than the one Backberg mentioned in his books. bye Eg

Edited April 12, 2011 by Evil Genius

[shortly]

Nice plant, it does look very cuzco'ish. But if its from Knize, expect the unexpected.

And yes its only taken 4 years for me to figure that one out i'm a bit slow

[trucha]

You might be interested in comparing your images to

http://trout.yage.net/sc/T_uyupampensis/UC/T_uyupampensis.html

or

http://www.troutsnotes.com/sc/T_uyupampensis/UC/T_uyupampensis.html

The first of those URLs should have stopped working as yage is closed but seems to be OK still - at least as of today.

Any links that are presently not working can likely be accessed by manually making that same edit.

The plant in those photos is now dead.

A young one was planted a few feet away but as the diseases killing its mom were never addressed (it had at least active orange rot and what looked fungal along with an intense scale insect infestation but I am betting it had root mealies as well) so the future of that tiny one seems unclear.

They do still propagate it and release it through their plant sales from time to time.

The gardener there told me he was forbidden to treat any diseases in the garden or even to remove any dead tissues or plants as the cactus garden looked more natural with dead plants due to nature being that way. (I am not joking) Dead plants exist all through the nature in the wild yet I'm not aware of any other part of the UC garden where they embrace and preserve dead plants and disease as part of the natural beauty they want to maintain for public viewing. Qui bono? Perhaps someone higher up has long-term plans other than cacti for that space? Its perplexing and puzzling.

Why this plant is interesting it that it was obtained from Riviere de Caralt's collection in Monaco as a live clone. His was said to have come directly from Backeberg (the person finding and describing it).

Both Backeberg and Ritter directed a bunch of plants his way.

Provenance would suggest that the ID is right but it had only partially prostrate branching (as in one single totally hanging until prostrate branch). That last part has caused a number of people (including Bob Ressler) to declare this one to be wrongly identified but it would be interesting to see how this grew if it were in nature on a cliff face rather than in an irrigated garden on a fairly level patch of ground - the branching pattern does, at least to me, suggest it would be very likely to sprawl and become prostrate and hanging if growing on cliffs.

Its interesting in any case due to its history.

Sometimes Knize does get his IDs correct. In this case some field work and DNA analysis would be nice.

Whatever you show in the photo and whatever is at UC, whether uyupampensis or not, seems likely to be closely allied with cuzcoensis although the flowers at UC are consistently smaller and the fruit also is smallish. The fruit on it always went black and hairy (and were very numerous) whereas the cuzcoensis (field collected by Paul Hutchison) that is present in the same garden was meagerly with its number of flowers per year and the fruit stayed green all of the way through splitting. The cuzcoensis there also has consistently larger flowers with much less hair on the throat.

Ritter though has made comments on some cuzcoensis existing with flowers smaller than the type.

Edited April 15, 2011 by trucha

[Gunter]

i think the cuzco, the uyu, the puq and some other collections are all in a related group/cluster

[trucha]

Their distribution is rather nicely related as well despite being on different slopes.

Ritter stuck knuthianus in there also (he sold it as cuzcoensis var knuthianus). Hunt lumps schoenii with cuzcoensis and glaucus with uyupampensis.

There is also the "Cereus sp" from Junin at UC Paul Hutchison collected that appears to be a smallish cuzcoensis with a prostrate to decumbent habit. Adding more to that list. I believe there are yet more?

One thing I get puzzled by is that I tend to expect fairly squat and fat round fruit on cuzcoensis as that seems common on the material squarely in the middle of it but most forms of it (including what is at UC) and allied plants lack that and have more pachanoid or peruvianoid fruit or in the case of uyupampensis fruit that is a bit more like puquiensis.

I'd still love to know a meaningful definition of the word "species" as it relates to plants.

I've heard laughter every time I've asked this of any professional botanist.

[Gunter]

In a Vascular Plant Taxonomy class i took, we were taught to use several species definitions, and told that no single one would work by itself.

the cuzco/uyu/puq group seems very interesting

I kind of think it represents feral populations of an ancestral form that was widely distributed a very long time ago.

we will see if future data supports this...

[M S Smith]

I've never really thought my seed grown plants in the picture above were in line with T. uyupampensis and just kept the name since that's what it came with. Here's Backeberg's comments regarding the species.

T. uyupampensis Backbg. (I)

Bo. prostrate to pendant, to 2 m lg.; branches to c. 3.5cm (in diameter); Ri. 9, flat, narrow, slightly raised around the small, light brown Ar.; Sp. 8—10, fine, irregularly directed, mostly 2—6 mm lg., darker, pointing up and down; Fl. c. 16 cm lg., white, reddish outside.—S. Peru (Uyupampa, c. 3000 m). See also T. glaucus Ritt.

I always thought that correct T. uyupampensis would look more like T. glaucus, which would in my understanding have it looking a lot different than T. cuzcoensis. Here's my own T. glaucus (R.I.P.).

I'd definitely agree with T. schoenii and T. knuthianus falling in or around T. cuzcoensis. I would have thought the same of T. puquiensis. I also wonder if the "Cereus sp" from Junin of Paul Hutchison is T. tarmaensis. Here's a couple shot of plants in Tarma, Junin. I don't know if they are from the same spot or even the same "species" (snicker, snicker).

~Michael~

[Teotzlcoatl]

When I go back to Peru in 2012 I will try and make it to Uyupampa to photograph the plants there!

[Gunter]

that T glaucus sure looks allied to the cuzco cluster to me

[M S Smith]

that T glaucus sure looks allied to the cuzco cluster to me

 

Possibly of a remoter lineage, but that begs where one breaks and the other begins.

~Michael~

[Gunter]

true, it seems to be allied but certainly unique

I'd love to see a uyu specimen fitting the original description... pendant and not thicker than 2 inches (>5cm)

maybe that is the source of the prostrate alleles in some of the peruvianus populations...

[trucha]

Hutchison's 'Cereus" looks similar but its stays really small by comparison. I've been revisiting that plant (and the tarmaensis) for what will be 14 years as of this coming Fall. Its located only a few feet away from their tarmaensis which is huge (maybe 12 feet and a myriad of branches). The Cereus never gets to more than around 3 feet tall before becoming prostrate to decumbent. Counting sections that are prostrate it only seems to reach to only between 6-8 feet but its location will not permit it to actually get large so its not clear how long those branches can become but it is certain that its habit is distinctive from their tarmaensis.

Tarmaensis has flowers that are actually rather distinctive when compared to cuzcoensis. I have not yet had a chance to do actual dissections of them though so I can only make general comments about them being smaller, hairier, fewer an smaller petals, different colored and shaped sepals etcetera. The one at UC looks more like their uyupampensis than their cuzcoensis in terms of the flowers.

Again though until someone somewhere ever bothers to actually define how to define a species meaningfully everything we can discuss will be of limited meaning at best.

There may be comparable images for the Cereus and tarmaensis at troutsnotes (b&w images of both are in the San Pedro book) but its been so long since I've done anything in the trichocereus section there that I am not recalling what is already uploaded and what still needs uploading. I'm estimating I've fallen somewhere between 4-6 thousand good images behind in terms of what I need to actually resize and get posted someplace. Farther every year as I keep taking more with every chance.

Glaucus is one to be careful about defining in discussion since there are two present in cultivation. One from Ritter that is spiny and possibly unique judging by the flowers. This is the real glaucus. One is from Knize is spined more like a peruvianus than Ritter's but not notched the same way as a peruvianus. I've encountered it more commonly than Ritter's. It, I think, is by far the more beautiful of the two but is not the real glaucus or at least does not match the published description.

I need to see Knize's reach some size before drawing more conclusions about it. I think I've given all of mine away to people in better growing zones so I can revisit them later. That has increasingly been my general strategy in recent years as I live nowhere most cactus would enjoy.

Something also worth reflection is that field collections from rugged and challenging zones may or may not look the same years later in a botanical garden with adequate food and water. After Kakster planted out his collection of trichs at the Shulgins years ago, seeing how so many once distinctive and different appearing macrogonus and peruvianus selections suddenly all began to put out new growth that all looked the same was quite illuminating. A lot of once recognizable stuff looked identical once growing outdoors in rows with equal major sun exposure.

Too bad gophers devastated that garden so intensely. I would have loved to see those plants get big.

This can go both ways. In South America huge pachanoi plants exist. 20 feet tall is not uncommon if left alone. In California I have yet to see one much over 12 feet no matter how old or intact. I've always been curious as to why.

There is a Beatles movie including a scene from George Harrison's estate with a single really fat pachanoi column looking much like a peruvian pach or a juuls. Its growing up from an unseen location below a balcony or elevated porch and APPEARS to be approaching 20 feet tall but its hard to tell. Its one interesting looking pachanoi though.

[mutant]

Hey I thought I could add my T.glaucus [kk]

Seems 'right'

Edited April 13, 2011 by mutant

[Gunter]

what a neat plant!

it reminds me of what Smith posted, very different than the knize plant by the same name, interesting that it has no blue to it thus far... but i've had plants that were less blue when younger and as smaller cutting that turned more blue when they were larger and more mature

[tripsis]

This thread has turned out to contain some very interesting information. So it seems that the best that can be said for my plant in that it's allied somewhere with cuzcoensis and may or may not be uyupampensis (but probably is not).

T. glaucus is an interesting looking species. Which other species is it most closely related to?

[Evil Genius]

A few years back, I obtained a totally diffrent Plant labeled as Trichocereus Glaucus that originally came from Knize. I´ll post pics later but i assume it is not the plant we know as Trichocereus Glaucus. bye Eg

[tripsis]

What actually makes Trichocereus glaucus a Trichocereus? The flower? Michael's reminds me of another cactus, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It's often prostrate, only to around 5cm in diameter, bright pink spines fading to white...

Edit: I think I'm thinking of Stenocereus eruca, which really doesn't look very similar at all.

Edited April 14, 2011 by tripsis

[mutant]

A few years back, I obtained a totally diffrent Plant labeled as Trichocereus Glaucus that originally came from Knize. I´ll post pics later but i assume it is not the plant we know as Trichocereus Glaucus. bye Eg

 

is it what "T.glaucus EG" seed you sent where from?? I did mention they had an awesome germ rate, didn't I?

please post pics of the said plant!

[M S Smith]

My T. glaucus above was from Sacred Succulents and if I was to think about what it most looked like I would say Echinopsis deserticola.

Here's an old shot of my E. deserticola (R.I.P.) I got from Bob Smoley.

~Michael~

[trucha]

That is another area of interesting plants that seems to tie Trichs like this and chalaensis to several other genera like Browningia and Rauhocereus.

I'm not sure about the glaucus from SS being Ritter's or something else. I tend to agree with your earlier speculation that its Harry Johnson's lucernatus.

Ritter's photos on glaucus really suck.

Whatever the SS glaucus is its allied with deserticola and fulvilanus. Its a little sad that there seemed to be such a wholesale rush to change name tags on those two. Older examples appear distinguishable but the predomination of lumps makes it a tangled mess.

Knize's glaucus as he sold me is a different creature. It does not fit Ritter's description of glaucus and its not this plant either. It sure is a beautiful cactus though.

The seedling farther above from Knize looks much more like RItter's photo so perhaps Knize finally got some seeds from the right plants? He does almost none of his own collecting. I'd love to visit the habitat in person and see these for myself.

Ritter's glaucus in habitat

http://trout.yage.net/sc/Ritter_1981_glaucus.html

What Knize sold me as a glaucus cutting

http://trout.yage.net/sc/KK336comment.htm

Edited April 15, 2011 by trucha

[mutant]

Michael, what a handsome specimen, tiger spines and all. Sorry to hear it's RIP now...

In my inexperienced eyes, this starts from speciments that resemble peruvianus with reddish spines, cuzcoid forms and go to even more unique forms...

what a mess...

what other names are involved in this cluter, besides glaucus, deserticola and uyupampensis?

hmmmmm

this tubercled habit reminds of 'knuthianus' too....

Edited April 27, 2011 by mutant