Quixote

I guess many of these "terracotta pot fatties" are in fact cuts from a much bigger cactus, and will sadly lose their fatness once they throw roots and start groing in the small pot?

A wise old Inca once said: 'Do not judge a cactus by its pup'. (or maybe that was some spaced out hippie from California) Let the pup grow a bit and see how it turns out.

Also, I think there must be some kind of reason that the "predominant cultivar" is in fact the predominant... I like mine for its shape, the rough sawtooth-like profile and nice dark green colour (not as dark as "true" pachanoi perhaps). Just repotted it to a 31-cm diameter terracotta pot, and looking very much forward to seeing if it will like the new experimental soil mix. O the joys of an extremely nerdy hobby I even kept the apartment cold the whole winter in the hope that it will help it flower! If not, then at least I saved on the central heating

I think people just poo-poo the PC because it's very common. For a collector, it's maybe not very interesting, but I like mine.

Some interesting new varieties coming soon maybe?

I just repotted a 1-metre tall trich, it had grown in a small pot and the rootball was really dense. I couldn't even loosen the roots, so I thought about rutting off some of the root mass, but decided against it. Should I have done that? I'm worried the cactus won't shoot new roots because it has been so confined for about two years...

I repotted another, smaller Trich, and noticed something: This cactus was also rootbound, but the roots were dry, brittle and (I suppose) dead. The bigger cactus had roots that contained moisture and seemed alive. I broke off most of the dry roots, didn't want them potentially rotting in the new pot..

Ok, difficult to see in your pic how much root mass there was. Question remains though: Will a tight pot-bound root mass be able to continue growing when it's repotted in a larger pot, or is it forever "locked in" to its confined size?

Removed...

Well that seems to be mostly because of the amount of soil in the pot, as the roots have hardly reached the sides, as far as I can see.. Strangely yellow colour, by the way..

Removed...

I had another cacti that I did that with - "sliced" off the sides of the root ball. It ended up taking too much off though, maybe I wasn't careful enough with it. It stunted the growth of the plant for an entire season. I think the problem is that most of the root mass is actually found along the sides of the root ball, since that's where it keeps trying to propagate. So the outer 5 millimetres are where maybe 80 pct. of the roots are found...

If your plants are poolside, could it be that splashes of water with chlorine get on the cacti?

I'm glad there will be armed marshalls escorting the visitors to the garden... in case any of the plants attack them

If you have a cutting of a Pachanoi, it might come from a plant that is many years old. That plant might also have started as a cutting of a previous plant, and so on. So, the question is: Do these cacti "remember" how old they are? Or is a 3-year plant that grew from seed basically exactly the same inside as a cutting that is from an original plant that might be hundreds (thousands?) of years old? For example, about flowering: If I plant a cutting from one of your old plants, will my new cutting flower more quickly than if I grew a new cactus from seed? In humans, there's something called a "teleomere", which is a little bit of DNA that gets shorter and shorter every time our cells divide. Like a death clock that will run out. As far as I know, cacti have no similar mechanism? Are they immortal? As in being able to continue to grow if they get light, water and don't get sick?

Is it just me, or does that look more like a Cuzcoensis than a Macrogonus?

Just wondering if I could crush some blackboard chalk sticks to add to my Lophophora soil? Or is it a different type of calcium? (I only have one little Loph in a pot, so don't want to buy a huge bag of chalk if I could just use a bit of sidewalk- or blackboard chalk)

Yes, I meant a *recent* common ancestor. Not going all the way back to Uncle Bob the Banana Thanks for the info though.

I wonder if Lophophora and Pachanoi share a common ancestor? Maybe it used to be one species before the ice age, then when the ice melted, the sea rose and the land bridge between North and South America got really narrow, covered with jungle, and the cacti there died out. The ones in North America adapted to the harsh conditions with floods reshaping the gravel landscape - they grew short and stubby to overcome this environment. The cacti in South America continued to grow as they used to, but retreated up the mountainsides to maintain their favorite clima. I guess nobody knows for sure ?

Eh... you do know that organic simply means grown without pesticides, right? No hocus pocus there...

I would be interested in a Loph-Pach hybrid. Wonder how that would look!

Take a look at my thread "How to recognize a Cuzcoensis" - seems like Cuzcos often have two major spines, one pointing upwards, the other downwards...

Cuzco it is.

Unfortunately, I've not had much luck discussing species with the online vendors. They will sell, but when asked if they believe their cacti are, for example, 'true' Pachanoi, PC Pachanoi, Cuzcoensis or Macrogonus, I find that vendors will just ignore the email. Possibly because of the "cactus paranoia" due to legal issues. It's really a pity we live in such dark times.

Step into the light