Gymnocalycium mexicana > Echinocereus pentalophus

[Vertmorpheus]

I tried tacking a far more mature button onto a reasonably mature Trich. pach. awhile back, all healed up ok they just didn't get along... off it came, new roots, no worries. Besides, I had a takeaway tub of mostly neglected mexican midgets grooving away on the windowsill in the kitchen ... bout a dozen... nicely happening... combo of hardening off the regulars and having a giggle at the weirdly columnar ones , thinking what to do with the damned things...

until...

wind meets curtain and seedlings meet sink 1/4 full of hot soapy dishwater... all but TWO are instantly parboiled... the remaining two are declared to be brave adventurers and up for a good time... promptly sliced just barely below their "waist" and tacked onto Cereus "peruvianus", mature specimen, and Echinocereus pentalophus subsp. not too sure... but it's more or less like these ... albeit sappier and less spiney due to their cultivated nature...

http://cactiguide.com/graphics/e_pentalophus_b_600.jpg

http://cactiguide.com/graphics/e_pentalophus_600.jpg

http://echinocereus.de/galerie/files/0054.jpg

with a few suggestions of

http://cactiguide.com/graphics/e_cinerascens_b_600.jpg

For now, it's a pentalophus... suggestions greatly welcome, as always!

the Gymnocalycium mexicana were from as far as I know standard enough seeds, via a breeder we'll call Mr. Numbers.

Note: never having done the typical Pereski graft, I cannot offer comparitive comments... make your own conclusions, ask questions if you have any. In relative terms, this was less difficult to do then a standard Gymno. "ruby cap" to Hylocereus undatus graft... no fuzzy lil hairs, for starters...

Seeds germed end of December 07 and were probably grafted around March, April...rough guesstimates anyways... latest pics would show the quite significant splitting and distortion this thing has done of late, I suspect thanks to overwatering in relation to humidity/minimum temps? Currently being treated with a wonderful new discovery of mine (more on that later) and seems to be recovering in intensive care aka The Fishtank of Freaks. I know that the Echino. stock will live happily under quite a lot of gravel...contemplating sinking the graft once it heals and settles down, so the button thinks it's retracted into the ground for the harsh season, perhaps. Ideas?

I did notice that splitting occured much more rapidly and deeply after I removed a couple of pups forming on the rootstock... just too much juice being sent up the top after that... probably a combination of things.

Scalpel, metho, shirt, micropore tape, couple days in stable cool dry shade, back out into the rough n tumble a week or two later.

Probably been on there... 3 months? Have to check dates on pics to be sure. Good firm grip, the vascular bundle in the stock was the ideal size to make a near perfect bang-on attachment. Size at the moment is @ 15mmW x 12mmH. Size at attachment was... pretty damned small... maybe 3 or 4mm, for both buttons.... the other, much more depressing graft that went on the C. "peru" is still the same size but has gone a blue-brown-red colour no matter where I put it, or what I feed it, refuses to get any bigger but last week spat out a couple tiiiny lil fuzz spots... it'd be 5mm round, tops. Stuck fast though, this tiny pimple on a 6 inch by 2 inch stock, haha.

Easier to spot in closeup, and they shared a bit of similarity to start with, but the skin of the button now has an almost identical "pore pattern" and look to the stock (a long lost google find, some ethno doc or other, makes mention of a cousin to pentalophus being a former "peyote" but was dropped due to being too strong, if only I could find it again!) Other points of interest are crazy elongation of some seedlings (they were fine a week before, then we went away and despite being on the sunny northern side of the curtain, they still spent all night long trying to grow up to the kitchen flouro we left on... crazy) , the plump looking one in the centre of the seedling pic that ended up being the grafted freak you see before you, and the Parodia spp. I tacked onto another section of E. pentalophus. Note... weird goop is Secret Cactus Goop, more on that later ;) It's better for em than it looks there, thats for sure, already proven its worth on some Echinopsis.

Also note that bulging of the stock in the 2nd from last or so side-on close up... bursting at the seams! Drying out as we speak, never you worry about that.

I can get a bit more of the Echino. stock, btw ;)

Push your happy buttons,

VM