Pach. oR Macro. ?

[mr b.caapi]

this is gettin interesting now

Pach. or Macro ?

Im leaning towards Macro....but whats confusing me is the fact that Macro is supposed to be rather low in Mesc content, my tests on this so far conclude its a heap stronger than the FBG pachs that i have.

Edited February 28, 2009 by Mr B.caapi

[Gunter]

I don't think pachanoi and macrogonus are different species, just forms of the same species.

I can't tell what you have there, could be either one...

Plants identified as macrogonus can be more alkaloid rich than many common forms of pachanoi.

It is a common misunderstanding that isolated tests of plants here and there get the last word regarding such things.

This is like floral data, you could examine a single flower from a single specimen and make the claim that all flowers of the speies are like it, or you could examine hundreds of flowers from hundreds of specimens to get a better picture. alkaloid content of plants in general, not just cacti, is like this too. I try not to think that the limited data on these cacti has any real bearing on reality, it doesn't seem to.

[Chiral]

Nicely worded Archaea...as always your a vault of information...

lets leave the potency at the front door Mr Caapi

[trucha]

All of these can range from worthless to not worthless. Even bridgesii is known to have some forms that are nearly devoid of alkaloid.

This is independent of environmental factors which also can have considerable impact.

One thing to keep in mind on floral studies is a single flower can't be used for coming up with characteristics despite some people writing floral descriptions based on a single flower. Carlos Ostolaza suggests that between 50-100 floral dissections are needed for each sort in order to determine what features are consistent.

[t st tantra]

was told macro was bridgesii like exp but only pach potency.........1/3 bridge strength......dont know myself......

the plant in this thread,i call peruvianus,is usually not real potent but is a quality ride....

t s t .

Edited March 1, 2009 by t st tantra

[strangebrew]

I see it as being allied to this plant at the Huntington Gardens in the US which is called macrogonus.

The plant here in the south has a smaller flower than pachanoi & is just average strength for these type of plants but if you've been used to PC it's noticable. More energizing, a lighter spirit I find.

If you grow it for years and it still never pups, rest assured it's the same. Probably made it's way over from the south at some stage.

[mr b.caapi]

I see it as being allied to this plant at the Huntington Gardens in the US which is called macrogonus.

The plant here in the south has a smaller flower than pachanoi & is just average strength for these type of plants but if you've been used to PC it's noticable. More energizing, a lighter spirit I find.

If you grow it for years and it still never pups, rest assured it's the same. Probably made it's way over from the south at some stage.

The spines in that pic seem alot longer than this.

[strangebrew]

Spine length can vary. What kind of light was it growing in? Lowish I would imagine as it seemed very blue.

[mr b.caapi]

Yeh, it was tucked away in an overgrown part of the nursery which was pretty shady.

[Micromegas]

Sweet photo strangebrew. A real beauty this one, when i first saw it i thought this is the real pedro for sure it just reminded me of the plants i saw in Peru but that is totally subjective it could be anything plus plants in Peru do not terminate like that except for stout peruvianus on cliff faces. I would say not enough sun in the nursery, it flowers prolifically in SA.

I had a foot long section pup from the base this week but my plants went pup-crazy with the heatwave. I had an eileen that had 11 pups in a week from a single column. Most of my sections have terminated, with some growing three pups from the tip. I wish they would stop doing that

It's any intersting one to grow for sure with odd form and morphing rib structure and a great find, call it what you want I reckon.

[strangebrew]

So you got a pup? Wow, none of mine ever have - damn frustrating.

Just about all mine terminated this season as well. There's more to this synchronization business than just the flowering I'm sure. All of mine were also doubles or even triples. It certainly ends up adding time to the growth rate but B.caapi "may" be luckier with his for awhile in this regard as it doesn't show signs of doing it much yet.

Photo's one of trucha's from HBG's.

[Micromegas]

So that is the plant labelled T.macro?

Yeah i was pretty stoked cause i was wondering how it was going to work out w/out just growing tall and then falling over. It shows it's possible. I have quite a few of these tho and only one with a base pup.

My site is very windy and exposed seems to promote pupping. Put your plants somewhere harsh and they will pup and flower prolifically as a survival mechanism.

[bit]

I'm a bit confused here. The OP's plant looks nothing like any macrogonus I have ever seen. Macrogonus appears to be a type of peruvianus, as opposed to pachanoi. While I support the theory that pach and peru are likely to be the same species, the plants with longer spines and bluer colour are known as peru, while short spines and blue-green colour are pach.

This OP's plant looks like a typical short spined pachanoi that has been grown with little exposure to the rain and has maintained the blue coating which washes off most.

For what it's worth, all reading I have done with regard to macrogonus potency points to it being stronger than standard pach or peru, hence the interest in it as a distinct sub species.

Edited March 1, 2009 by bit

[trucha]

Sorry about that. I had apparently misread some of the posting rules.

Edited March 1, 2009 by trucha

[trucha]

The work is still ongoing trying to sort out the origin of the Huntington plant.

It COULD be that Berlin is where the HBG plant came from but as they lost its accession data due to it being kept only as a one of a kind card in a card file it seems unlikely we will learn too much more through the HBG.

Several possibly noteworthy things do exist though:

Right around the years when this plant would have entered that collection (seemingly during the early-1930s based on other plant accession numbers on either side of it) Erik Werdermann, who had been associated with and then director of the Berlin-Dahlen gardens, visited the Huntington for an unclear period of time (probably in 1933 while visiting the US SW).

Backeberg was also contributing to the HBG around this same time period (he worked at Berlin under Werdermann in the early 1930s)

It does not seem out of line to wonder if the Huntington and Berlin plants might have come from the same stock. Botanical Gardens LOVE trading plants with each other - especially historically important plants. The macrogonus is certainly in a line for what Hertrich was actively trying to create in the desert garden.

Granted there is no actual data concerning the macrogonus BUT, perhaps just a coincidence, I find it intriguing that its accession number is only 12 higher than Backeberg's bridgesii seedlings contribution made in early 1932. (Between February 1932 and September 1933 the HBG had added around 4500 new accession numbers. For a further sense of scale for their accession activity: despite the interruption of WWII, Harry Johnson's numbers that were made in the early and mid 1950s are more than 10,000 and often more than 15,000 accessions later.)

My only point in all that is that the HBG had direct contact with two people who were associated with the Berlin gardens during the same period of time when that macrogonus appeared in the Huntington (that date being based entirely on its accession number).

Its unlikely we will ever know much of anything for real about either person's input or lack of input BUT we do now have some bona fide Berlin stock in our possession to both watch grow out and to eventually compare against the HBG plant whenever their DNA gets extracted and compared.

Perhaps a bit like Don Quixote, I hope to bracket this further on my next trip to the HBG.

I've been visiting that HBG plant for a number of years and have seen longish spines, really short spines and something in between them form on the plant.

Also new spines that can sometimes be golden with dark tips (this only appearing for me on a fairly recent trip there) or brown with darker tips or entirely dark brown or reddish with dark tips all on the same plant depending on when I was there or what section of the plant I looked at (some is always in deep shade due to a huge Cereus next to it while most gets decent to intense sun). I'll bet one could selectively choose three images and have at least some people think they were on 3 different plants.

A webpage is planned for showing the variable expression on it but it is not yet completed.

We've also noticed something similar in Matucana where some branches of that peruvianus show reddish bases on the spines and others are golden. Sometimes both of those branches can be present on a single plant.

The flower buds on that HBG macrogonus are strikingly small, short and largely denuded. They would not open for me during the time that I had available despite staying longer than planned and revisiting several times.

I think I already posted a photo of one here?

[trucha]

SB, did your plants experience drought stress in the year prior to flowering. Sometimes that seems to cause a number of plants to really put out flowers?

[strangebrew]

TRUCHA - The flower buds on that HBG macrogonus are strikingly small, short and largely denuded. They would not open for me during the time that I had available despite staying longer than planned and revisiting several times.

I think I already posted a photo of one here?

No, I don't believe you did. I'd really like to see it, it sounds exactly the same.

Same plant today.

[mr b.caapi]

M.S.Smith , Where are you ????

[M S Smith]

B.caapi, I'm inclined towards thinking your plant is the same one as the one in these two pictures of strangebrew's I found elsewhere.

If I'm right this is probably the same plant as in strangebrew's most recent post with the four pictures above. You mentioned that yours was grown in a bit of shade and that there were sections that were nearly twice the size in diameter, so I think it probably wouldn't be best to judge the plant from what are really "immature" sections.

What I did notice about your clippings B.caapi is the slight fasciation of the rib growth. You will notice this on strangebrews plant above in the first picture, as well as in his other post. You can also see it in these shots of a "mac" taken by Ferret.

Interestingly enough this plant in Ferret's shots is the same fasciated plant in seen in one of Passive D's under the name of T. roseii.

So in the end B.caapi I would probably say that your plant is an underdeveloped T. peruvianus form. This is of course not to say that T. pachanoi and T. peruvianus aren't the same "species" at the end of the day due to floristic characteristics.

~Michael~

Edited March 1, 2009 by M S Smith

[trucha]

That weird fused areole thing also occurs on the Huntington macrogonus and also on a macrogonus posted here some time back by Black Dragon.

I think that I've posted images of that wherever some of the images above were previously posted?

An image of that bud at the HBG titled macro_f.jpg was posted under the recognizing macrogonus thread:

It should be directly viewable at

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...15732&st=50

It seems like its rather close to what you are growing?

Apparently I cannot seem to get a direct link to the image to work only a link to the topic.

It was in post #62 under that thread.

I tried to insert a copy below but clearly am lacking some understanding of managing images on this site:

Help or advice is appreciated.

I managed to get the image posted here by opening a copy of it in that thread, copying it to my desktop and reuploading. Surely there is a way to directly link to images that are already uploaded?

Edited March 1, 2009 by trucha

[trucha]

RE T rosei

At least several different plants were apparently given this name in Victoria by some sort of 'cactus expert' for whom I do not know a name.

So far I've encountered plants looking squarely like peruvianus, & also macrogonus & also scopulicola all being given this name by that person. (All were in a single person's collection/garden. She is not willing to share proper names of this person or her suppliers or the collectors, for whatever reason.)

Its an ancient synonym of peruvianus from when Werdermann tried to rename everything as a Cereus species in 1931.

Sometimes is is found spelled roseus to bring it into line with Trichocereus names.

[strangebrew]

So do you think these flower's are noticably smaller than peruvianus you have seen Trucha?

While the HBG plant is very similar, it is still slightly different. Seems to have whiter hair and a tendency to be more visibly spiny. Yet both have the monstrose look, the segmenting, prostrate habit and smaller flower.

[trucha]

Substantially smaller but my experience seeing them in person is limited to that; peruvianus I've seen a decent amount of on several forms.

The Huntington plant does not shows any pronounced monstrose action that I've seen but its got some weirdness. I THINK some images might have been posted under the Terminal weirdness thread?

Its capable of putting out tips with light and short spination but its generally spiny.

It will be interesting to keep track of this and if it becomes feasible submit dna samples of all of the above.

I'm quite interested to see how macrogonus and peruvianus relate once someone starts studying them. All of these plants really not just those two.

[strangebrew]

Yeah I noticed that today - much less monstrose action happening there, so the plant here is more than likely a different one. The plot thickens!

[trucha]

The cause of monstrose and cristate expression is still unclear.

It seems that any cactus can express this but some obviously have more tendency.

I am presently suspecting a minor pathogen of some sort is involved that impacts apical meristematic tissues and alters the form of the new areoles at some pre-emergent point.

Mycoplasmas leads the pack of suspects for me right now but a lot of other alternative scenarios are just as plausible.

Its fascinating to me that I can find expression of this on easily a handful of different columnar pachanoid/peruvianoid sorts in a single botanical garden that has had a longstanding propensity towards collecting wild monstrose and cristate plants.