How to recognise a Scopulicola

[bit]

Just thought I'd add this in, being one of the most frequenly plants mistaken for Pachanoi.

I will get out and take some pics of mine shortly - it has TEN buds on it at the moment :D

[XipeTotec]

Just thought I'd add this in, being one of the most frequenly plants mistaken for Pachanoi.

I will get out and take some pics of mine shortly - it has TEN buds on it at the moment :D

club like shape (in younger plants... not sure about old plants) no spines in older plants. ribs all meet point to point in centre.

[M S Smith]

At my Flickr pages you can see your standard short spined form, then your long spined form which came with the collection # "FR991" attached to it, and then the "T. cordobensis" which is probably just the long spined form mislabeled. I would love to see if plants matching the "T. cordobensis" grow in Cordoba in northern Argentina, but I doubt it.

http://flickr.com/photos/msscacti/sets/72157600837105578/

~Michael~

[trucha]

The amount of confused plants identified as scopulicola (especially in the US and to a slightly lesser degree in Oz) is huge.

Its really easy to tell a true scopulicola once it gets past the juvenile stage. A friend in Nimbin turned me onto this.

Walk up to your plant and grab the column with your hand. If you get stuck with spines its not a scopulicola.

Juveniles can be more spiny but if correctly identified lose this as they grow up.

Its EASY to tell apart from pachanoi.

I'll get some pictures posted soon that will remove any questions.

If it is a true scopulicola, this is among the easiest of the trichs to ID.

It took me two trips to Oz to get it sorted out. The thing spanning pp 214-215 in San Pedro is not a scopulicola but rather a pachanoi collected in Ecuador by an Australian and now cultivated in Oz. I've never encountered it in the US yet.

I posted mislabeled pictures here a while back under scopulicola based on bad information I had been given. It too can get somewhat clubshaped but its not a scop.

Rio mizquiensis and cordobensis might be allied but appear to be very distinct but I can find out nothing concerning the latter or how it came to have its name.

I have not seen either flower so don't yet know what to think.

I do know that at least one of the riomizquiensis cuttings that I got from NMCR was misidentified.

The only cordobensis I have seen is in Michael's pictures but it would be nice to learn more of its origin and how it came to bear the name scopulicola var cordobensis.

[bit]

Here is some detail on the short spined variety, and flower pics:

[trucha]

Sweet photos!

I would question any long spined scopulicolas as actually being scopulicolas and would suggest they are much more likely something else that was mislabelled or mistakenly identified.

I say this based on Ritter's descriptions and on observations. Scops seem to among the most consistent of the trichs in appearance but some actual field work would be a really nice thing. Ritter was truly a hardcore explorer and few if any cactus lovers have dared to follow his tracks preferring instead to stay near roads, trails, railway lines or towns.

Scop seedlings are seemingly spiner than adults but the tissue surrounding the areoles swell to almost swallow the spines as they grow up. This seems to be a characteristic feature of them

I would at least suggest people need to support the ID of longer spined scops with something other than their being sold under that name or with a FR number.

NMCR has sold more than a few mislabelled plants. No deception was involved just a wealth of plants in inadequate space and a lack of adequate organization.

Bob Smoley, Cactus Gems, Harry Johnson, and a host of other commercial growers have released their share of assorted mislabelled trich species and forms as well. Its not an uncommon thing for a variety of reasons.

Knize is almost as famous for bad labels (or lack of labels) as he is for providing beautiful plants so it is just weird when anyone bases any conclusion about identification on KK numbered plants. As Michael has already pointed out a good number of the seed grown KK242s in cultivation are more likely cuzcoensis although I would suggest this is a simple seed mislabelling issue as what are clearly bridgesiis have also been grown from KK242 seeds and a large number of other "KK242" are known. Knize actually sold me a few different KK242s as live cuttings that were distinct from each other and did not resemble any seed grown KK242 I have ever seen.

GIGO should be a maxim in trich studies not just data processing.

[M S Smith]

As Michael has already pointed out a good number of the seed grown KK242s in cultivation are more likely cuzcoensis although I would suggest this is a simple seed mislabelling issue...

Well, what do you know, this I think is the first time I've seen you offer any support to my conjecture that some of that older KK242 seed might be T. cuzcoensis. Thanks kt, it's good to have some support, no matter how conditional.

Like Bob Smoley said to me once, "Knize uses floor sweapings for seed packets."

~Michael~

[teonanacatl]

All the scops Ive grown from seed look like macrgonoids.

Ive got at least 2 cuzcoensis type plants, one Ive never seen anything like Ill post a pic.

[Evil Genius]

Cool, i´m always happy if i can see unusual seed grown plants! bring em on.

edit: bit, i love your flower pics. is that MOMENTS label from you? Is that automatic generated by a program or is it to point out that the pic is copyrighted?

Edited August 28, 2007 by Evil Genius

[trucha]

Michael, I don't agree that cuzcoensis and KK242 are synonyms as a general statement (since many KK242 are clearly not)but I do agree with your observations that cuzcoensis (seed) was sold as KK242.

I would suggest it is a better view to regard those KK242 as mislabels rather than as "real" KK242 (whatever KK242 might mean of course)

Some of Knize's other peruvianus forms could be also but we really will most likely never know anything with certainty as Knize sells a lot of mislabels and claims to recognize many KK242 forms.

The fat yellow spine base does sometimes show up on new growth of lots of other plants even on the fat Matucana from Icaros or hte HBG macrogonus occasionally but clearly a good number of seed grown KK242 are so similar to each other as to suggest they arose from a single large seed lot and those do certainly look like cuzcoensis due to how consistently and extensively they express this.

Interestingly those are more consistent than a lot of the trichs regarded as cuzcoensis obtained as live cuttings from around Cuzco. I lack conclusions about what all of those are. Cuzcoensis variants? Other trichs? Hybrids? There seem to be at least half a dozen distinct ones at a minimum in that area. In recent years I have had friends either staying in the area for extended periods working with shaman's or visiting and collecting there so am slowly gathering more data.

I think you do a lot of good in terms of making nice observations (I believe I have told you that on multiple occasions for some years now?), its only the details of the conclusions and the indulgence in our human desire for certainties that I sometimes have problems with. Its nothing personal of course as I greatly like you.

Knize has also sold a bunch of amazingly beautiful bridgesii as KK242 seed. Interestingly some of the nicest fat Matucana-type peruvianus I have thusfar seen came from Knize seed that was sold as pachanoi.

One thing to keep in mind is that Knize is a major seed supplier of both cactus seed vendors and cactus producers all over the world and has been doing this for forty (40) years as of this year.

At some point in the next couple of weeks I'll get to uploading more images.

Bob Smoley's comment is funny but perhaps a bit wrong as if I recall he was also commenting on having lousy germination which is something that most people do not report. One grower might have put it nicer when commenting he thought Knize paid kids to collect seeds for him from anything resembling a trichocereus.

I LOVE what Knize does though despite the schioid labelling. He has brought us not just a wealth of confusion but a huge number of gorgeous plants. I doubt any single individual has done more although Ritter may have come close.

A friend visiting Knize's operation said it is a huge chatic collection with serious crosspollination potential so if Knize collects seeds from his own place this could be part of the problem too. This is a serious issue with NMCR and sometimes with MG although for most of what they sell MG's seeds are amazingly consistent. Huancabamba excepted of course.

Teonanacatl - scops start out spiny as seedlings but lots of mislabels also exist out there. Self-sterility and ease of hybridization is also a potential issue to keep in mind.

Some growers (including at least one in Oz) are fortunate enough to have started large plantings of FR seed many years ago so have good genetic stock capable of consistent pollination but this is not true for many growers who may have but a single or only a few mother plants growing with other trichs or echinopsis. Hybrids are very likely from a number of seed suppliers or botanical gardens for this reason.

A sad tendency for many people is to label their seeds with the ID of the mother even if they don't know the pollen parent.

This is actually a significant source of horticultural confusion as it is quite common for multiple species to flower together and for bees to love trich pollen so much they can rapidly strip the anthers clean by the time a person wakes up and starts deliberately pollinating. Bats and hawkmoths can also do a lot of pollination the night before. Some people do pollination at night as soon as the flowers open but even this is not always enough since many times pollen will be ripe before the stigma is receptive to implantation and each seed arises from a single pollen grain so multiple pollen parents can potentially contribute to a single fruit's seeds. Fine, if not desirable for good genetic integrity, when they are all the same 'species' but this is not always the situation.

[M S Smith]

Michael, I don't agree that cuzcoensis and KK242 are synonyms as a general statement (since many KK242 are clearly not)but I do agree with your observations that cuzcoensis (seed) was sold as KK242.

I would suggest it is a better view to regard those KK242 as mislabels rather than as "real" KK242 (whatever KK242 might mean of course)

We actually agree kt; I also don't think T. cuzcoensis and KK242 are synonymous (that would be ridiculous since T. cuzcoensis doesn't grow in the KK242 collection range of Matucana...as far as I know). I was just interested to see you express some agreement (even if conditional as I said above) that some of the early "T. peruvianus KK242" seed, including seed sold under this name by Steve at MG, was T. cuzcoensis.

I certainly don't think this seed grown "KK242", that is possibly T. cuzcoensis, is in fact KK242 (though like you know this number is assigned to a multiplicity of plants, some of which grow in different areas). I agree with it being a mislable of the mother plant and/or seed once collected.

~Michael~

[PD.]

The thing spanning pp 214-215 in San Pedro is not a scopulicola but rather a pachanoi collected in Ecuador by an Australian and now cultivated in Oz. I've never encountered it in the US yet.

I posted mislabeled pictures here a while back under scopulicola based on bad information I had been given. It too can get somewhat clubshaped but its not a scop.

Would thing be the plant we call "Super pedro" ?

This one has had me puzzled for some time and i had just assumed it was a large scop variant or hybrid. The super pedro i have looks to be the same as the plant pictured on pg214 of SP3rd, it is just hard to tell with the black and white pics. If it is the same plant, do you have any further info on it as im sure im not the only one who thinks super pedro is a scop variant.

pics.....

Flowers

"super pedro" and scop

regular pach and super

Edited August 29, 2007 by Passive Daemon

[bit]

Cool, i´m always happy if i can see unusual seed grown plants! bring em on.

edit: bit, i love your flower pics. is that MOMENTS label from you? Is that automatic generated by a program or is it to point out that the pic is copyrighted?

Thanks eg Momentz is my photography company (www.momentz.co.nz). It's a watermark if you like

[Andrew]

I just bought A really nice specimen the other day,I,m saying its a scop

but I dont have a camera.Although I seem to be able to pick trichs easily

these days from other types of cacti.It was a good buy too,almost 500 mm

for $17.00.

[trucha]

When I first visited Oz a friend growing what you call super pedro told me it was a spiny scop variant. Hence my mislabelled images on page 214-215.

Last trip there I spoke with another person who had more familiarity. He told me this was field collected in Ecuador by an Australian in the late 1930s and was certain that it is a pachanoi form. He also told me the name of who he thought its collector was and that he would check for more information and to be certain about the collector's name. I did not write the name down and forgot it but am trying to get more information. I was not there long enough to run into him again and he does not use email so getting more information is slower than normal. He is considered to be a solid information source concerning cacti though.

You are not alone at all, Lots of people think it is a scop since it is so distinctive from the more common pachanois.

Probably most people who grow it assign that ID but when I asked my friend who had first told me it was a scop he said he just assumed it was based on how it looks and our other friend should know more than he did.

As soon as I know more I'll post it here. Whatever more turns out to be. I need to make a phone call I think rather than relying on the mail.

Ritter described spine lengths of 1mm on adults (or the absence of spines) and 2-5 mm on seedlings for recognizing scopulicola.

THe way the spines are packed in the areole on scopulicola is distinctive also. I'll get some images posted to compare this with pachanoi which has more dissimilarity in spine lengths and is more separated in the areole. ITs hard to describe but easy to show with images.

Of course "super pachanoi" (which seems to be an apt term in several regards) could be something distinct from either one even if wild collected in Ecuador. It would be great to do some sort of rigorous field work to study variations in trichs and their distribution

Edited September 1, 2007 by trucha

[trucha]

The first of these is a scopulicola growing in Oz

The next one is a tip cutting a botanist friend was mailed from England

[gilligan]

Ok, then...

If it's easy to tell a scop past the juvenile stage (where does this end?) i have a 'scop' that is 1.4m high and still sending out small pach style spines. The newish growth looks pach-ish, but fills out towards the base like a scop. Very much like passive's pics.

Thoughts?

[bit]

Ok, then...

If it's easy to tell a scop past the juvenile stage (where does this end?) i have a 'scop' that is 1.4m high and still sending out small pach style spines. The newish growth looks pach-ish, but fills out towards the base like a scop. Very much like passive's pics.

Thoughts?

Got a picture? See if you can get a closeup of the skin texture too. See above for the 'rough' scop texture, this is pachanoi texture (almost like an orange skin). Also note the growing tip - pachanoi has the jellybeanish tip, scop just hs the ribs emerging straight out without them being broken up.

[gilligan]

Bit... not doubting you on this, but it may just be the defining answer we are after for Scop identification, so i need to shout this query -

Trucha, MS, others - "do all scops run this type of non jellybeaned tip?" if so, could this be a defining characteristic?

I have a few smaller pachs (well, they were sold to me as pachs) ~1inch in diameter that all have their new growth as straight ribs. 3 types of pach, 2 with tips and neither hae this jellybeaning. All my bridgesii do...

[trucha]

Other plants lack that jelly bean look too.

Its more likely to be a feature that can perhaps indicate it is not a scop but not for its absence to prove that it is one.

[M S Smith]

Here's is a classic T. scopulicola. There are no folds as the apical meristem.

~Michael~

[bit]

As promised, a 3 week old bud, from the plant in my posts above:

[Auxin]

I'm pretty sure this ones a young scop but I thought it best to ask before changing the label, the reason I'm hesitant is it has traces of V-notches. A few years ago I got it as a small seed grown juvenile from an amateur collector who called it a pachanoi, its spines were ~8 per areole and 2-3 mm, I dug it up to make sure it was in fact seed grown, it was. A few years on its spines are 5-8 per areole with 6-7 being the norm and the spines are 1-1.5 mm long for the most part with 2mm being the longest. Width is now ~7 cm. It shows no "jellybeanish" tuberculate growth at the tip. However it does have faint traces of V-notches as is visible in the pic on areoles 3-5 from the bottom on the left rib and 2-4 on the center rib in the pic, these seemed to pop up on the shaded side. Can textbook scops sporatically make shallow V-notches or am I looking at a possible hybrid of some sort?

[trucha]

I noticed I had some images of an NMCR FR991 scopulicola seedling taken over a few year period. Its sort of interesting to see the transformation of its spines and areoles. Or maybe I'm just too easily entertained.

http://trout.yage.net/sc/T_scopulicola/NMC...copulicola.html

[M S Smith]

kt, I've searched and searched and searched and can not for the life of me find a shot of T. scopulicola in it's southern Bolivian habitat. Know of any?

~Michael~

Edited February 24, 2009 by M S Smith

[trucha]

No, the only plant photo I am aware of that could even be regarded as wild was Ritter's. It was just a staged flowering tip not a view in habitat.

There should be something in hand by this summer as its reported home is one of the targets spots in Bolivia.

The hope is to find it, riomizquiensis and as many pachanoi forms as possible in Bolivia with an eye for what came from seed versus cuttings.

One nice thing about Ritter (and also a challenge for revisiting some of his collection sites) is that he commonly went much farther into the field than did Britton & Rose and Backeberg.

A lot of his collections came from places rarely if ever visited by a tourist (unless on a cactus tour) and it appears that a few are actually going to be potentially dangerous to get in and out of. The man was a real explorer even though he does mention employing local children to do some of his most dangerous instances of fruit collection on cliff faces.

Fortunately there are a nice number of younger people in the group doing the looking this summer. A feature of this part of the work that is easily overlooked concerns much of the work needed requiring both significant physical exertion and sometimes being at high altitudes for extended periods.

Ritter describing its home as rocky cliffs and blocky waste dumps/rocky hills suggests this one will likely provide some exercise. At least is only going to be around 3000-4500 ft in elevation.

Interestingly Hunt is apparently teetering on lumping it into bridgesii (lageniformis) now and wonders if it was introduced.

An exploration of its cited habitat should be helpful is sorting at least some of this out?