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trucha

Michael's pachanot

Question

This is likely to be old news for many people following assorted threads here and elsewhere but I finally got around to creating a page discussing Michael's observations concerning the predominate San Pedro clone in the USA.

Please see http://www.largelyaccurateinformationmedia...edro/pedro.html

Comments or feedback are welcomed although responses will be much faster if sent to or cc'd to [email protected] or [email protected]

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Subspecies or forms makes sense to me, maybe even species.

Speciation is occuring me thinks, so how and when is the line drawn?

If Bolivian pachanoi exists, and it is distinct from Peruvian pachanoi, we will need a means of seperating them for discussion. Maybe the regional data you have been collecting can play a role? I think knowing the region where the material hails from is a good way to seperate plants sharing the same species when you have no alternative.

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I am greatly interested in creating a map of the Andes on which I can create hyperlinks to photos from particular regions and towns etc., but I totally lack the skill.

~Michael~

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"They don't sound like very good botanists when you put it that way. "

Its an easy thing to say but of the four I have asked two are not just widely respected but have multiple plant species which they have successfully described as accepted species and both have species named after them.

I think they are in fact good botanists and recognize the arbitrary nature of any system of taxonomic classification as well as cnsentual reality being a driving force.

"I have my own species descriptions for the SP group, perhaps you do as well?"

Actually not really. This is something I am working out. I feel its much too early to really know where to draw lines.

I want to avoid having idiosyncratic descriptions. This is why I still refer to the published descriptions whether I agree with them or not.

On your hybrid observations I do not dismiss anything you have seen as I have seen the same thing. However, I have also seen exceptions such as with the pachanotXperuvianus (peruvianus mother) by SS not the otj one also offered by SS which showed a surprisingly narrow range of expression.

There an element about your genetics presentation that needs clarification. Alleles tend to be preserved since they code for functional things like proteins. A mutation screwing up function could be fatal.

Therefore these are primarily used for studying things which diverged a really long time ago not the studies of more recent divergences such as would result in species or subspecific rankings.

Usually nonfunctional coding is chosen for relationship studies in these areas because it is faster mutating yet highly preserved. Google the term "microsatellite" if not familiar with the reasoning underlying this. Its typically the relative degree of difference that is being used for studying relationships of closely related plants not their actual genomic sequencing or library of known alleles.

I share Michael's thoughts on a distribution map with linked images.

Within the next few years this should become increasingly doable.

I would also like to see Hutchison and Ritter overlaid onto Backeberg in the existing map MSS compiled.

Edited by trucha

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Its an easy thing to say but of the four I have asked two are not just widely respected but have multiple plant species which they have successfully described as accepted species and both have species named after them.

I think they are in fact good botanists and recognize the arbitrary nature of any system of taxonomic classification as well as consensual reality being a driving force.

Being a good botanist to me relates to something other than having been regarded as one. I bet they are far better botanists than myself, still you might get a better reply than laughter from them. Describing a species is not delineating a species. Discovery is not taxonomy. The laughter tells me that they won't take the topic seriously enough to offer more than a dismissal of the notion, I could be wrong but that is how it strikes me.

I feel its much too early to really know where to draw lines.

I want to avoid having idiosyncratic descriptions. This is why I still refer to the published descriptions whether I agree with them or not.

None of my descriptions draw lines or involve guesswork. At this point though since genetic evidence is lacking we can use the lack of more info notion to refute any concept of species we want in the group. That doesn't strike me as practical. You have pointed out more than once that to use standard descriptions results in misidentification and cross keying.

There an element about your genetics presentation that needs clarification. Alleles tend to be preserved since they code for functional things like proteins. A mutation screwing up function could be fatal.

Therefore these are primarily used for studying things which diverged a really long time ago not the studies of more recent divergences such as would result in species or subspecific rankings.

I am glad you brought that up, this is a central challenge. Proteomics may provide the answer, a single protein can be coded for in multiple ways and a single allele can give rise to a variation of products. Looking at enzymes may provide the needed contrast.
Usually nonfunctional coding is chosen for relationship studies in these areas because it is faster mutating yet highly preserved.
This does have the problem of being more arbitrary in nature and requires the application of parsimony which has no place in science but is the mark of opinion. I have seen strong evidence that parsimony fails to account for natural shifts in alleles, thus while non-coding regions are nice for finding contrast, they are harder to draw coherent data from. If however there is no record of the real shifts then there is nothing to illustrate how parsimony is the quintessence of oversimplification. Because of this it still gets employed in bio-informatics, however in controlled studies it is reveals to be very problematic.
Google the term "microsatellite" if not familiar with the reasoning underlying this. Its typically the relative degree of difference that is being used for studying relationships of closely related plants not their actual genomic sequencing or library of known alleles.

I have an invitrogen catalog right here... it is old 2002. I have college training in taxonomy, proteomics genomics and bioinformatics, just so you know. I may have focused on history and philosophy but I took quite a bit of botany and biology including courses relevant to this topic. I am also familiar with NCBI. For the record I am no expert on these topics, but I have more than the average education in this area.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

invitrogen.com

I share Michael's thoughts on a distribution map with linked images.

Within the next few years this should become increasingly doable.

I would also like to see Hutchison and Ritter overlaid onto Backeberg in the existing map MSS compiled.

So what if someone started up a website just for that purpose and that purpose alone?

I could volunteer time and effort, maybe even a host.

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If I could acquire Hutchison's and Ritter's complete species lists with locations (preferably in English, though not necessary) I would be more than happy to make maps like I had for Backeberg.

I wish I could just have a JPG, put key numbers on it with the species legend to the side, and then when you clicked the number on the map it would take you to a page of photos of plants from that area. With this sort of interactive map I would just link to photos I have collected which are in that particular area. This wouldn't necessarily key up with any particular authors work.

~Michael~

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TRUCHA - I had not encountered the claim that the pachanot predominated in Oz.

Friends in both Queensland and Vic have insisted it does not for them and others are more available in their local world. (They were my largest critics for this reason when I first proposed the term pachanoi PC - the PC for predominate clone.)

Around Byron Bay on the other hand it was the most commonly seen form I witnessed people growing, it was pretty common elsewhere in NSW too but so were several other forms.

I'd love clarification if I'm in error.

If you're going to generalize about Australia as a whole you'd have to say PC is the predominate clone, certainly in the south and to the west there's little else at all.

btw it hasn't turned up in New Zealand yet as far as I'm aware.

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SB-

Yours was my impression from the only two visits I've made to Oz where what sure looked like the pachanot formed maybe 60% or more of the pachanoids that I saw in NSW.

However, I got jumped on for making the same comment you just did (that it was the predominate form there) on a post on this forum a year or more ago primarily by people from Queensland and Victoria.

Voogelbreinder also corrected me saying it was not at all the case in his experience in Victoria. One thing I've noticed in Victoria based on photos and comments shared with me is a lot of deaths of older gardens and plants due to prolonged droughts and watering restrictions. Pachanot may in the future steadily become the most likely replacement there as it is being mass produced by commercial cactus growers in Sydney and no doubt elsewhere.

I know nothing firsthand outside of NSW where it was certainly the most commonly encountered for out of the maybe half dozen or so sorts that I saw.

Followed by scop, then the superpedro (although I am not clear which of those two really were more numerous as both were fairly common) and then the assorted long and short spined ones without any data.

I'm not sure any general statement about a pachanoi in Australia can be accurate though as its not a single place but a bunch of quite different places on one continent. Anything that might be said seems likely to be taken issue with by someone somewhere.

Archaea- you should look more into microsatellites as your conclusions about what they are and what they look at may need a close evaluation.

Fast occurring mutations in essential coding segments tend to be deleterious since they involve functional products.

The noncoding sections of repeating basepairs on the other hand can experience fast occurring mutations which can be preserved due to those mutations not impacting functional products. This is why they are viewed as having much more value for closely related plants.

What are looked for are consistent sets of microsatellites and it is the relative changes in those which are used for the assessment of close relationships. I don't dismiss your concern this is not actually a direct comparison between functional DNAs.

This is simply how the vast majority of cladistics in cacti are being done. Perhaps even all of it but I would have to do some homework to be sure.

There is a lot to suggest alleles coding for specific synthetic enzymes may in fact be present in plants that do not express them or do so poorly. Whether than means a mutation in the code for the enzyme or if some other factor is involved is too early to tell.

I'm not aware of any cactus genomes that have actually been fully sequenced? I sure would like to be wrong on that one. All I know of are some limited studies of portions coding for some enzymes?

I'd still say those botanists were good and realistic.

All a person has to do to successfully name a new species is two things:

1) Write a good description with all requisites including voucher

2) Get David Hunt to accept it.

This is why there is humor in my naive question.

No one is in agreement about what is significant (for instance look at how trivial features of flowers are used to acceptably separate plants like cuzcoensis and puquiensis or pachanoi and bridgesii yet far more substantial floristic differences are ignored in lumping Lobivia into Echinopsis.

Getting a new species accepted is much more about who you are, how respected you are and who you know than the details within the proposal.

Its not the nuts and bolts of taxonomy that is most at failure here but the edifice of established taxonomists and the approval bottleneck called the International Cactaceae Systematics Group lead by David hunt at the Kew.

Hence no easy answer for what presently defines a plant species nor any easy way to say how to successfully describe one.

Sad but also a bit darkly amusing in a really twisted way.

In some senses its a true Catch-22 situation. A friend pointed out to me that we all like to think Catch-22 describes a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation but in the novel it is defined entirely by example until the end of the book when Yosarian ask an old woman what it means. She tells him (I probably paraphrase) "It means they will do whatever we let them get away with."

That shifts the meaning considerably.

It is also pertinent here.

Only if people keep calling the organ at the Kew on its crap and insist taxonomy can and should become a science rather than another good-old-boys club can we ever expect it to be different.

If you want to create a website for larger detailed maps that can be linked to names, published descriptions, local images and such that would be great.

Edited by trucha

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I should be able to have Ritter and Hutchison's data together by the end of next month. Ritter's is easy enough as all the data is already here. I only have parts of Hutchison's though and won't be in SCal for several more weeks.

I'd also suggest people not be intimidated by languages they might not understand.

In many cases a lot of it is apparent in meaning since its taxonomic descriptions and not only are those typically of a fairly common generalized format but good taxonomic glossaries are online (See Mark Faint's website for a nice multilingual one)

Type localities and elevations also are easily apparent.

The www.Troutsnotes.com website has an increasing number of descriptions both translated to varying degrees and untranslated. Lots of stuff can also be gleaned by copying and pasting text into places like www.freetranslation.com.

This autotranslation can cause a lot of nonsense to be created but very often can help both glean information and identify those passages worth getting fully translated.

Edited by trucha

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That was my impression from the only two visits I've made to Oz where what sure looked like the pachanot formed maybe 60% or more of the pachanoids I saw.

However, I got jumped on seriously for making the comment (that it was the predominate form there) on a post on this forum a year or more ago primarily by people from Queensland and Victoria.

Are you sure it was here? I've never seen that. What else is in Queensland?

I think scopulicola will be the most visible in the suburbs in a few years, Gardenworld/Paradisia used to pump them out by the truckload to all the chainstores.

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That was my impression from the only two visits I've made to Oz where what sure looked like the pachanot formed maybe 60% or more of the pachanoids I saw.

However, I got jumped on seriously for making the comment (that it was the predominate form there) on a post on this forum a year or more ago primarily by people from Queensland and Victoria.

Voogelbreinder also corrected me saying it was not at all the case in his experience in Victoria. One thing I've noticed in Victoria based on photos and comments shared with me is a steady death of older gardens and plants due to drought and watering restrictions. Pachanot should become the most likely replacement there as it is being mass produced by commercial cactus growers in Sydney and no doubt elsewhere.

I know nothing firsthand outside of NSW where it was certainly the most commonly encountered for out of the maybe half dozen or so sorts that I saw.

Followed by scop, then the superpedro (although I am not clear which of those two really were more numerous as both were common) and then the assorted long and short spined ones without any data.

FWIW, from the travelling around victoria searching for large trichos and gardens full of cacti i would have to agree with you trucha and SB to say the PC is the predominant variety. Granted I have seen many different varieties of tricho all over the state, but if there is usually a single large plant in a front yard or on a property it is PC and if there is a large garden of different sorts of cacti then 90% of the time there will be a PC therein. Alot of small towns around here have at least on large tricho plant and usually its a PC. Only a few times have i seen large pachanoid plants that arent the PC, they are there but nowhere near as common.

That said, i still need to get out and do a bit more travelling.

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I think scopulicola will be the most visible in the suburbs in a few years, Gardenworld/Paradisia used to pump them out by the truckload to all the chainstores.

For sure SB, but really, alot of the ones i saw were seedlings around 10 to 15cms and alot of them were used as those novelty cacti, you know the ones where the cactus is protruding out of a ceramic clowns, mexicans or policemans pants or well neglected as only chain stores and large nurseries can do. Still, im sure a few may get grown out and planted in gardens. I havent seen them around for some time now though, i was sick of the sight of them when i should have been buying them.

Still, there must be a HUGE amount of PC gettin propagated out there, the massive amount of material that is already available as cuttings makes it far easier to quickly reproduce and fill gardens.

Edited by PD.

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Yep, it was back when there was an ongoing discussion about Backeberg's clone and I proposed the use of the name pachanoi PC instead.

I had no reason to disagree as my total combined experience of being in Queensland has been less than 24 hours. If you tell me they were wrong I have no more reason to disbelieve you than I did to disbelieve them when they told me I was wrong.

The posts of images people made to illustrate their point were of the more typical bona fide pachanoi sorts with smooth edges and short spines (often with rather clublike ends).

The search function apparently won't accept "PC" as a search term so I have not located it. It would have been in one of the earliest occurrences of the use of that term here if not the first or second thread containing it.

Another valid objection at the time was that it was not the predominate cultivar in Peru.

The reply I got from Voogelbreinder was unrelated. He responded to a comment I made elsewhere that it was the predominate form in US and Oz.

I did not however notice any bona fide pachanoi being grown in public view anywhere that I went. Backyards, back porches or cactus gardens in cleared patches surrounded by forest were much more typical. To me it seemed most people who I knew liked these to be out of public view.

Most of the public cacti I saw were Cereus of one sort or another.

I'd love to be able to spend more time wandering around looking.

The main reason pachanot is gaining in numbers is it usually grows faster than scop or bona fide pachanoi. Its also very amenable to being pumped and not rotting. A trick a number of US growers employ is using a dilute soluble fertilizer with every watering combined with a fungicide like benomyl. Laying adult branches along the ground and letting them pup at multiple points is also a common approach for commercial producers.

Even not using those approaches its by far the easiest cactus I've ever propagated outside of Opuntia. I used to have several hundred of them that were 3 or 4 feet (lots more smaller ones) and gave away literally hundreds of feet of live columns.

None of my bona fide pachanoi or scops did nearly so well or grew as fast for me.

Gardenworld told me a scop could grow 7 feet in 10 years for them. A pachanot has very commonly put out a total of 20-30 feet of growth on a single column (which I always kept cut to 3-4 feet tall so as to be able to deal moving everyone for with winter) during that many years. If they do not add a foot a year minimum on every column I know something is wrong with them.

I think its simple propagation mechanics underlying its prevalence. Fueled by its beauty and desirability as a garden plant of course.

Edited by trucha

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Pachanot is also still growing in numbers because it is easy to part with and give away compared to more rare plants.

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Yep, it was back when there was an ongoing discussion about Backeberg's clone and I proposed the use of the name pachanoi PC instead.

I had no reason to disagree as my total combined experience of being in Queensland has been less than 24 hours. If you tell me they were wrong I have no more reason to disbelieve you than I did to disbelieve them when they told me I was wrong.

The posts of images people made to illustrate their point were of the more typical bona fide pachanoi sorts with smooth edges and short spines (often with rather clublike ends).

The search function apparently won't accept "PC" as a search term so I have not located it. It would have been in one of the earliest occurrences of the use of that term here if not the first or second thread containing it.

Another valid objection at the time was that it was not the predominate cultivar in Peru.

The reply I got from Voogelbreinder was unrelated. He responded to a comment I made elsewhere that it was the predominate form in US and Oz.

Your memory is bending here a little I feel, seriously there's been no such thread, none with people jumping on you anyway, well.... maybe Smithy. :P

try searching "predominant" & you'll get this thread as the first mention of PC

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...c=15934&hl=

I've been here 5 years & can probably count the number of times I've seen images of "bona fide pachanoi sorts with smooth edges and short spines (often with rather clublike ends)." originating from within Oz on one hand.

Edited by strangebrew

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It would have been a post following that one that included images from Queensland.

This is the only forum that I actually participate in so while *perhaps* I am wrong its odd I would completely shift my opinions on feedback I never got or received in a dream.

As time permits I can track down the thread. Or evidence of diminished mental capacity.

I did not see a bunch of smooth edged club ended ones myself in NSW (in 2003 and 2006) just a few - mainly it was spinier ones of several sorts including what looked like the pachanot.

As much diversity of forms seemed to be in NSW as I've encountered anywhere including the US. My sampling is likely skewed by most of my friends there being nursery people and/or cactus collectors?

A fairly random selection of what was encountered in NSW can be viewed at

http://www.largelyaccurateinformationmedia...singles_Oz.html

This does not include any images of the white wooly pachanoi from Ecuador for which a link was already posted.

However I did run into what appeared to be a lot of bona fide pachanoi.

While I probably should have created a separate page for them I added two composite sheets of the 'super pedro' to the above as the lower two sets of images. I'm not sure if this or scop was the more numerous of the two in my friends' collections.

The slender ribs of the flowering images reflects the high water demands of the columns.

There was no attempt made to present this proportionally as there was no prior intention to capture that factor when taking photos (On both trips I basically took photos as fast as opportunity presented until my camera cards were full and then stopped.)

This is just a bunch of single images with some forms repeated for sake of comparisons. Often the repeats of different forms are from different gardens but in some cases it is closer views.

As mentioned probably 60% or more of what I encountered in NSW appeared to be the pachanot.

There is one reason other than slower growth why I would not expect the scopulicola to ever exceed the pachanot in numbers over the long haul, that being the latters far greater tendency or perhaps capacity to produce offsets and multicolumned plants.

I've seen scopulicola branching from the base but never with the numbers common on the pachanot.

Edited by trucha

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Another reason might be their sheer size alone, people may dump them once this starts to become apparent. This one (not mine) is starting to boom, even the upper branches are pupping.

post-608-1235521879_thumb.jpgpost-608-1235522486_thumb.jpg

post-608-1235521879_thumb.jpg

post-608-1235522486_thumb.jpg

post-608-1235521879_thumb.jpg

post-608-1235522486_thumb.jpg

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Tip for Trucha, the search engine here aint the best so just use google like this:

pc site:www.shaman-australis.com/forum

It will give you 7 pages, well alot of people talk about PC's in the myco forum too ;)

Enjoying the banta, please continue

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Ok, now I'm tripping. Has anyone ever seen a plant like this? It would look to be the "pachanot" with some of the longest spines I've ever seen. Or is it just a T. bridgesii? Odd.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29358173@N05/2930558263/

Be sure to hit "all sizes" to see the largest picture.

~Michael~

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I was thinkin that myself SB but like you mention it is hard to say due to it being a picture for one, which never really captures what you see in person and secondly the fact that there seems to be so much variability in the plant we all call pachanoi here in AU. I wish my bloody camera was working!!!

I have at times suspected that there is 2 types here, one being a much fatter, heavier spined plant and the other a skinnier, smaller spined to almost spineless plant. When i look at what i sometimes think are different plants they often show the same traits depending on conditions of growth. I have talked about this with a few ppl and the usual conclusion is "yeh, its hard to say isnt it". X pollination doesnt seem to work though which prolly should if they are two different plants. Ill try Xing them again when they flower but im not expecting anything to happen.

its all pach to me.

 

I've been thinking the same thing. My 'etienne' pach is the fatter bigger spined pach, Rev says it's probably pc. 'Fields' pach looks dead ringer for pc but has black hairs, is skinneir and has smaller spines. Look totally different in my garden. Then there's the 'el pedro' clone which looks like 'Fields' pach to me. Has anyone been successful crossing these? We'll have to get out to see Robert and do some investigating PD, I'm sure it must be from Sth America somewhere, maybe Bolivia like alot of his plants, if it was a hybrid I doubt he'd lie about it. Doesn't seem the type, too much of a stickler for the correct names lol :wink:

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