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mutant

How to recognize Trichocereus Terscheckii & Pasacana

Question

I wonder what would be the main characteristics of these fatty trichs, as well as other similar trichs of the fatty 'family'...

They grow more slowly than the fast growing trichs, I know that. They have more dense and long spination than pachanoi family. What else?

I am supposedly growing both species, so it should be fun :)

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The thing which sets apart terscheckii and taquimbalensis are the ribbed and slightly curved spine ime.

one of my wendermanianus does this curved spine a lot

sweet thread anyhow

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Thanks tripsis sounds intriguing, it is certainly a wonderful plant would be good to know where it came from.

Hrm, my picture is not the best, nor is plant totally healthy, being 2m tall in a 30cm pot. i am sure that it would look very similar to the one you posted in that environment. It is certainly of a similar girth.

Interesting. to be sure, i measured today the "validus" and it had a girth of 75cm for a single stem at it's near fattest point.

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Here's the info regarding that SS find:

Trichocereus validus? NL52509a

Thick columnar plant with large stout spines and big 4" diameter sweet fruit. Collected by N. Logan at 7,600', between the town of Puna and Belin, Potosi Province, Bolivia. These large Trichocereus are in need of serious study to clarify the taxonomy. This plant falls into the T. validus/werdermannianus/tacaquirensis/taquimbalensis/ escayachensis complex. Z8b-9a

Interesting. to be sure, i measured today the "validus" and it had a girth of 75cm for a single stem at it's near fattest point.

That is massive. Is that your personal plant or one in someones old cactus garden?

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It is my own plant rescued from a house demolition site i literally picked it up as the bulldozer was about the flatten the site and the house.

thanks for the ss notes i hope however that they took photos. 4 inch diameter would be too narrow as stated in the SS report if girth were a diagnostic feature; also i would not say it had large stout spines that sounds more toward werdermannianus or some others of which I posted photos which have very thick spines that often bend or curve a bit.

never tasted the fruit but fruit taste is surely not a good way to id cacti!

Edited by Micromegas

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Sounds like an amazing plant to own. What a score. :)

I would expect they took photos, but you have to buy the DVD of them. The 4 inches is referred to the diameter of the fruit, not the stem.

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'terscheckii'

P1010234.jpg

P1010254.jpg

the smaller of the three is a 10 ribber

[grafted]

P1010255.jpg

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I would have thought werdermannianus would have been closer to the validus/tacaquirensis group than terscheckii. Do the plants pictured have labelled of what they are supposed to be be Archaea?

Edited by tripsis

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they are/were only given the ID of T validus and T terscheckii

the identity of T werdermannianus is debatable to some degree, some align it with the taq group, others with the terscheckii group, i have no idea as to how to straighten that out, but I note that you can find more than one type/form of plant being identified as werd...

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I have already posted a few pics of validus from the Fields collection. Here are some shots of the plant i used for my terscheckii crosses. Has been debated by some as to it being a terscheckii due to it being "too skinny" "too spiney" and "a clumper", is obviously far from too skinny and as for the other attributes debated upon, only the clumping is a good point but imo no reason to say its too hard to ID or slot into "terscheckii", flowers have the typical terscheckii form afaic.

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IMG_0039.JPG

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IMG_0041.JPG

IMG_0046.JPG

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Wow yeah, that's what I am talking about. More photos!!!

this is wendermanianus , lol.

this can only be advanced / figured out by continuing to post photos of known plants as they evolve and we observe. It's of a big importance, I am sure you know, to get photos of growing tips to make better comparisons and IDs.

Archaea

the first plant is somewhat reminiscent of my bigger wendemanianus, the old spines are much paler in this one though. I would love to see a photo of this plant's growing tip, mostly to see colours and habit of new spines.

The last one of the lot also looks more like what I have in my mind for terscheckii - with maybe some longer spines than expexted. Are they grown in full sun?

I would not place terschecki and wendermanianus in the same group though. Not yet anyway. In my limited experience, what I am growing as wendermanianus is pretty different and faster than what i am growing as terscheckii. My seed was sourced from nomad botanicals 2008, was sold as a Trichocereus 7 species pack, half of them didn't germinate though... ALso, a SAB sourced wendermanianus with collection number looks more like my wendermanianus's than my terscheckii's... There could always be a mis-ID, but those are the plant's I have experience with and they're no more than 2,5 y.o. [my bigger wend is bursting into maturehood several months now as it was grafted so it has long exhibited mature characteristics of wendemanianus phenotype, also threw a 9th rib.

This is one of my favourite threads. Keep it alive

PD, what a perfect specimen. I would love to see close-ups of the growing tips of this too...

Edited by mutant

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Ok more pics

'wendermanianus' from seed

P1010300.jpg

P1010299.jpg

P1010298.jpg

wendermanianus KK1094, seed sown, sourced from SAB

P1010312.jpg

and my biggy wendermanianus, same source as first 3 seed growns

P1010311.jpg

P1010309.jpg

P1010310.jpg

Edited by mutant
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PD, what a perfect specimen

Of what, in your opinion mutant? :P What basket you gon throw it in?

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Well, I have no reason as of yet to believe it's not a terscheckii, but if you're serious

I would take some photos

macro close up of areole, new and older

close up of growing tip

close up of mid growth

rib counts and spine per areole count [both min and max] would be helpful too.

not saying I'm gonna confirm or dispute the ID with these, I am suggesting we should take such photos to compare with other specimens.

hey do you happen to know anything about "terscheckii X ruby visions" plant??

PS: for what it's worth, I have never seen any Trichocereus flower IRL :blush: so.....

PS2: this is an awesome link with some terscheckii photos that blowng found

Edited by mutant

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Yeh ive been meaning to get back out there and get some more pics of the plant(s) in question hopefully whilst in bloom. FWIW imo it is a lil off for a true to form terscheckii but then again alot of plants i have or know of are a lil off in their appearance especially bridgesii plants (which noone seems to ever argue/discuss about for some reason!), is just a hell of alot easier to place said plants into the category they MOSTLY fit into and anyways, we could all argue till the cows come home about what is a true this or true that. There is just no way of ever knowing the parentage of some plants although its plain to see the hybridisation yet is alot easier to slot them into the closest pigeon hole rather than them being called somethig like "that hybrid looking bridgesii that may be a pachanoi or peru hybrid, im just not sure as something looks amiss" :P. Bridgesoid, pachanoid, peruvianoid blah blah blah, just the way i do things although it seems to upset a few ppl lol

hey do you happen to know anything about "terscheckii X ruby visions" plant??

nope, not a thing.

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I agree with what you say.

Anywayz, if you wanna make me happy, send proper photos of that terschecki, that was my only point.

Phenotypes, taxonomy, identification technique, I love them and love the consequent discussion. I suppose you do too, that's why you're here.

Edited by mutant

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P1010556.jpg

A new friend, from a cool trade! Looks pretty identical to my biggest grafted terschecki [2,5 y.o. yep this graft wasn'r very successful but its still bigger than those rooted, so...]

P1010559.jpg

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I posted this at another forum in response to mutant and thought I might as well post it here too...

T. terscheckii, T. atacamensis (which includes T. atacamensis subsp. pasacana), and T. poco (T. tarija), are all similar in their flower characteristics, but are not synonymous. Variations, and even postulated intermediaries, exists throughout the populations.

T. werdermannianus, T. tacaquirensis, T. taquimbalensis, T. culpinensis, and apparently T. validus are all synonymous and have a flower quite distinct from those plants mentioned above. There are variations within this overarching and widespread Bolivian species that probably deserve subspecies classification (Backeberg understood this). The swollen spines you mention are clearly on the variety of Tarija, Bolivia, but as the plant matures the spination often changes and can look like a completely different plant. These sorts of changes are common with many large Cactaceae.

T. chiloensis seems to have very few, if any, close relatives.

Go to flickr.com and search terscheckii, atacamensis, pasacana, tacaquirensis, taquimbalensis, etc., and you will find lots of photos. The identifications are occasionally mistaken, but regardless of the name attached to the photos it is truly fascinating to see all these giant Trichocereus in habitat.

There is a great need for a very thorough examination of these large Trichocereus of Bolivia and northern Argentina.

~Michael~

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got this thick ,heavy, spiny pup in the mail as T.atacamensis...

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Sweet, blowng, I like it we all got the germ with fatties too

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T. taquimbalensis

P1040339.jpg

P1040335.jpg

P1040341.jpg

T. terscheckii 1.5 year old graft

P1040331.jpg

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Time for an update of this thread.

What I thought was wendermanianus is probably best described as taquibalensis, and the awesome variety with the playfully curvy spines with swollen bases is [according to Trout's notes]

Trichocereus taquimbalensis var. wilkae [first collected in Tupiza Bolivia]

So here is my baby, "Efi"

P1060249.jpg

Here are two more of the same sowing [same seed batch] which were never grafted, hence the smaller size. Should be interesting to take note of the differences along the years

P1060263.jpg

And here are T.chilensis, newcomers, awesome plants too!

P1060262.jpg

Edited by mutant
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Damned gorgeous plants mutant. Very jealous. I'd love to have several each of T. werdermannianus, T. taquimbalensis, T. tacaquirensis and T. culpinensis.

Where did you get the Trichocereus taquimbalensis var. wilkae from?

Edited by tripsis

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I grew this T. culpinensis from seed. Probably could qualify as T. taquimbalensis var. wilkae as well. Though seriously, this group needs some serious taxonomical investigation, and one must not forget that mature columns can look completely different, as the second photo of a plant from Tupiza clearly shows. The third photo is just cause I like it. Hopefully the area is too hot for goats, but I doubt it. :angry:

post-19-0-38494600-1313788619_thumb.jpg post-19-0-61221200-1313789490_thumb.jpg post-19-0-30170200-1313789571_thumb.jpg

~Michael~

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Edited by M S Smith
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Photo number three: my dream cactus patch! Damn they're beautiful.

How old is your seed grown Michael and where did the seed come from? I've looked for T. culpinenis seed, but to no avail.

Which features make the second photo T. culpinensis? It really does look very different.

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