ID request for cacti saved from Bunnings,

[tripsis]

Picked up a couple of cacti from Bunning today, one is a Trich for sure, the other I'm not sure about.

Can anyone ID what species they are?

Cactus 1:

Cactus 2:

Thanks everyone.

[paradox]

did you see the parental stock hunab?

i don't think it's any more insane than any other discussion about trichocereus ID (though admittedly that IS pretty insane).

i think the value of this thread has been to get people thinking about things they never have before & learn something.

anyway, how does any discussion start? a lot of threads here that have become interesting have started very simply.

well now you've entered into it theres no getting out of it, do you know for sure that both parental plants are non hybrid bridesii? from the start of this thread this was basically what i was trying to say, buy is it really that simple? please explain...

[tripsis]

Mmmmm, I can't wait to check out that nursery one day. It must be pretty damned incredible.

Even if the owners of Hamilton's claim their stock are bridgesii, there's nothing stopping cross pollination when the plants are flowering, so even if the seeds are harvested off a bridgesii, they could have any Trichocereus species' genetics in the seed. Having said that, I'd rather not have hybrids, but I suppose it really doesn't mean all that much at the end of the day.

Anyway, this thread has been great! There have been a lot of really helpful and informative replies.

Cheers for all the input so far paradox, it's very interesting to hear of the comparison between your plants and mine.

Hey mac, thanks for the additional info. I've noticed some Trichocereus species have massive aeroles in comparison to others. T. tacaquirensis is one that struck me in particular.

I'm slowly piecing together the various features that make a bridgesii a bridgesii and a cuzcoensis a cuzcoensis.

[Chiral]

did you see the parental stock hunab?

i don't think it's any more insane than any other discussion about trichocereus ID (though admittedly that IS pretty insane).

i think the value of this thread has been to get people thinking about things they never have before & learn something.

anyway, how does any discussion start? a lot of threads here that have become interesting have started very simply.

well now you've entered into it theres no getting out of it, do you know for sure that both parental plants are non hybrid bridesii? from the start of this thread this was basically what i was trying to say, buy is it really that simple? please explain...

hey the threads fine I'm just amused how some threads progress and snowball...sometimes you just can never tell...it' still totally interesting otherwise I wouldn't and others wouldn't bother to check in and read it everyday...

Have I seen the parental stock...NOPE, but what the owners at Hamiltons did tell us was that they buy all their seed in bulk ..like 40 to 50 thousand seeds at a time...the have licenses to import from overseas so we would never know the parents, they are very sheepish and cryptic about answering any questions when you are out there talking to them...check this...they wouldn't even let us take a single photo of any cactus period....some of the massive old ones in the front entrance to the nursery are very cool, they refused point blank to let us take any pics...they are strange people out there those lot but sweet in a kinda redneck Jerry springer hillbilly kinda way...they got some magnificent seedlings out there...give ya the tip ...out there a 20cm seedling goes for $3.50...make sure you go during the day and take a box and fill it up.

[tripsis]

For what it's worth, I was just taking a look at a couple of TBMs I recently got and on many of their areoles there are 5 and 6 spines. None had above 6 spines per areole though.

[paradox]

yeah & tbm's DO have that large central spine on many areoles, which i always thought was quite rare or non existant in most bridgesii.

looking at my hamiltons bridges some of them clearly have the large central spine which i always associated more with peruvianus/cuzcoensis. if i was gonna keep arguing i'd have to err with chiral & go back to my original argument that it's all quite simple. T. bridgesii from hamiltons.

i will post some pics soon of some hamiltons bridges which have advanced a bit

[paradox]

well if anyones still interested heres some pics of that plant i posted a pic of earlier, which looked just like tripsis' seedlings when young. it's a few years older now. i couldn't be bothered posting pics of my other hamiltons bridges at the moment sorry, although a couple of them can be seen in the bottom pic

Edited October 19, 2009 by xodarap

[ballzac]

They look very similar to the collector's corner bridgesii's. Interesting.

[paradox]

They look very similar to the collector's corner bridgesii's. Interesting.

well they're both commercial cacti suppliers, coould be imported from the same supplier?

chiral did you happen to ask where & from whom they import their bridgesii seeds?

edit: you know what, i just remembered a couple of years ago when i approached hamiltons about buying from them wholesale, they referred me to the guys at collectors corner. not sure if they're affiliated or anything though

Edited October 19, 2009 by xodarap

[tripsis]

Cool, thanks for those. The older parts look very much like standard bridgesii, but the young arms look remarkably like the second one of mine.

I was at Hamilton's on the weekend. I should have asked them. I only saw one small bridgesii seedling and not a single peruvianus one. I was pretty surprised. It wasn't nearly as cheap as Chiral said and had a surprisingly small range available for people to buy from. Pretty average really. I guess times change. They now import many of their cacti from the Czech Republic and surrounding countries.

Edited October 19, 2009 by tripsis

[paradox]

Cool, thanks for those. The older parts look very much like standard bridgesii, but the young arms look remarkably like the second one of mine.

to tell the truth your second one really is probably just standard bridgesii aswell

[mac]

ill post a few pics of my 2 plants i have when i bring my camera home

just a standard bridgesii & a Eileen pup i got from sharax thats pupping @ the base lovley looking fast growing plant thanks sharax

many spines on new growth on both but they r in full sun in a semi arid zone so this may be why they produce more spines than others so conditions must play a big part

Edited October 20, 2009 by mac

[mutant]

Cool, great plants!!!

[Xenodimensional]

Mmmmm, I can't wait to check out that nursery one day. It must be pretty damned incredible.

I was at Hamilton's on the weekend. I should have asked them. I only saw one small bridgesii seedling and not a single peruvianus one. I was pretty surprised. It wasn't nearly as cheap as Chiral said and had a surprisingly small range available for people to buy from. Pretty average really. I guess times change.

I was pretty dissapointed when I went to Hamiltons a couple of years ago, I'd somehow got it in my head that it was going to be a cactus mecca. When I got there I found the range of stuff for sale to be below par e.g. a small sickly loph, in a wire cage, for sale for $70! When the woman serving customers in the greenhouse insisted a particular Haworthia hybrid was a different species of Haworthia altogether I fled immediately with very few aqquisitions. My local cactus nursery puts them to shame imo. Oh well. Not bagging them too hard I hope, just wasn't nearly as good as I'd been led to believe...

I drove past Orana cactus world on the way back from Hamiltons and cried when I saw that it was closed as it looked to be the real deal...

[bit]

I don't mean to diss hamiltons or any other nursery for that matter, but I've found that cactus nurseries are just like any other plant nursery - they hybridize, get seed from unreliable source (kk for eg), etc. And they just put whatever label is convenient on it. Then someone visits the nursery and talks to a staff member who has no knowledge of the plants outside the nursery - they point to a plant and say "this is definitely species A" - they don't know any different. Person leaves nursery believing that the staff member is knowledgable, when in fact they only know as much as they need to to sell plants for profit - which is at the end of the day what they're about.

In short, just because it's a big nursery, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about, or that the plants they sell are accurately labelled.

As enthusiasts I believe the knowledge held on this and similar boards far surpasses any that nurseries have.

[Xenodimensional]

In short, just because it's a big nursery, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about, or that the plants they sell are accurately labelled.

As enthusiasts I believe the knowledge held on this and similar boards far surpasses any that nurseries have.

Thankfully my local cactus nursery is better than that, sadly one of the owners passed away a few years ago but both he and his wife were (she still is) dedicated researchers and proved to be very helpful and (properly) knowledgable (i.e. they would pull out books and look things up if beyond their knowledge).

There is nothing worse than seeing a stall of cacti at a market (or a whole nursery full of cacti) and they all have a "succulent" or "cactus" tag.

Having said that and in defence of cactus nursery owners all over, Cacti and Succulents are a fairly large group of plants and it is probably realistically beyond just about anyone's capacity to identify all the species correctly, let alone remember all the names. Most (non-ethnobotanically minded) Cactophiles aren't particularly fussed about trichs ime which can add to the confusion (i.e. they won't spend too much time identifying them properly), not too mention how variable they can be.

[paradox]

I don't mean to diss hamiltons or any other nursery for that matter, but I've found that cactus nurseries are just like any other plant nursery - they hybridize, get seed from unreliable source (kk for eg), etc. And they just put whatever label is convenient on it. Then someone visits the nursery and talks to a staff member who has no knowledge of the plants outside the nursery - they point to a plant and say "this is definitely species A" - they don't know any different. Person leaves nursery believing that the staff member is knowledgable, when in fact they only know as much as they need to to sell plants for profit - which is at the end of the day what they're about.

In short, just because it's a big nursery, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about, or that the plants they sell are accurately labelled.

As enthusiasts I believe the knowledge held on this and similar boards far surpasses any that nurseries have.

thats totally true, but i'm having a real hard time calling the plant i posted aniything but a pretty common bridgesii. although it really is all relative, as what someone would call a common bridgesii (or any trich) varies a lot from country to country & region to region & person to person...

somehow i can see this discussion going the inevitabvle way of so many trichocereus taxonomy discussions before it lol