Trichocereus santiaguensis forma mostruosa (Or T. spachianus monstrose)

[hostilis]

I was just a little bit confused as to why the monstrose form of T. spachianus is reffered to by a completely different species name... Here's my question:

Why is T. spachianus monstrose called "Trichocereus santiaguensis forma mostruosa"?

This may be a pretty stupid n00b question, but an explanation would be great.

Thanks

hostilis

[trucha]

Its just a matter of history and synonyms.

santiaguensis has been merged into spachianus so some people have gone with that and other people are still using the original labels to show that particular material had a different name prior to the name change.

In matters of mergers that change names in a lumping fashion I'd suggest it to be of value to keep track of the original name that came with the plants (even when in error it can prove to have tracking value). Lumping is not always right and sometimes older views even get resurrected.

I'd also suggest that when deciding to update name tags on plants its better to leave the old one there and just add another one with the new name. If half a dozen name tags accumulate in a pot over time it won't be any more confusing than the literature.

[hostilis]

Cool. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks trucha! I'm guessing I could have learned this with 5 minutes of research, but I took the easy way out and asked you all here.

Edited December 10, 2013 by hostilis

[solaritea]

To add more confusion, I've read that the "Trichocereus santiaguensis forma mostruosa" is actually a T. shaferi, not a T. spachianus.

(It's cactus-art vs sacred succulents round two!)

[trucha]

To add more confusion the original spachianus itself is considered to be unclear and confused in origin.

If a person can resist taking any of this seriously it can be mildly entertaining.

[hostilis]

I've seen a pretty clear difference in the T. shaferi monstrose and the Trichocereus santiaguensis monstrose's shape. That is just the clones I saw though and could be differences in environmental factors that caused the different shapes. I really have no knowledge when it comes to taxonomy of this genus though.

Edited December 12, 2013 by hostilis

[Evil Genius]

Yeah, the santiaguensis monstrosa is actually not santiaguensis. And santiaguensis is pretty much an irregular name. Its one of the many names that came up for cacti that we would consider varieties today. Maybe someone raised that monstrose out of a seed bag that was mislabeled with the old name or so.

[trucha]

One additional problem plaguing the shaferi monstrose is that a number of people in the world have decided it must have come from something other than shaferi since it looks so different.

Kermit from Oasis produced that shaferi clone from a commercial scale seed planting so it is a different lineage than the other monstrose mentioned. If I understand right that one may have been offered in horticutlure since the 1930s?

Its a little sad that people do not more often retain the original grower names along with the monstrose and crests they have produced as some of these can have multiple points of entry (like pachanoi and bridgesii each of which have easily half a dozen monstrose lineages in horticulture).

[hostilis]

I've seen them on ebay a few times. The shaferi monstrose.

There's one up right now actually. If it actually is shaferi monstrose... beats me.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Trichocereus-schaferi-monstrose-rooted-plant-14-tall-/321271663359?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4acd488aff

Don't everyone jump on it at once! Lol. If it wasn't -20c here i would buy it myself, but it would surely die in the post.

Edited December 16, 2013 by hostilis

[trucha]

For the first few years it was around no one would be sold one unless entering into an agreement to never sell a cutting for less than a specific price. I'm not remembering the number at the moment but it was some hundreds of dollars.

Once copies got spread around it did really well for a number of people so nice plants can be found for reasonable prices or trades.

[trucha]

EG's comment brings up a good observation.

Spegazzini collected a bunch of problems. Apparently this was commonly the result of careless field collecting and record keeping, literally not really knowing where he was. Sometimes he does not even get the country right.

This sort of thing was far from uncommon in early days of field collections when cactus collection was the sport of only the rich and entitled.

Spegazzini DID field collect plants though, and that seems worth keeping track of even if his collection data was muddled or worse.

As for whether old names should be entirely shitcanned I would suggest that it is of value to keep track of them. Not for being right names or something we should recognize as valid but for sometimes being of historical value in recognizing different lineages or forms.

The name spachianus should also be shitcanned just as justifiably of course but what to call something that no taxonomist can justifiably name will be a tricky question so I anticipate spachianus will persist as a name spanning several previous entities.

When creating the book Cactus Chemistry By Species (google CactusChemistryBySpecies_2013.pdf to locate the most current copy online) I deliberately preserved a lot of the older names including some things which are no longer recognized (only if there was a published analysis for them) as some interesting chemical divergences also exist; if a person has an mind for comparing the results for synonyms.

Lumping readily obscures some of that. For instance santiaguensis and spachianus BOTH have seen published analysis involving what was recognized as those two names in Europe. Pertinently both of those are divergent in a way that disappears if the results become merged for spachianus.

Are we certain about just what was analyzed in those two accounts, of course not. (At least not in this case.) We just know that two analysis occurred which produced different results. To me that tiny thing seems hugely fascinating as does the variable results reported within a single species.

[trucha]

I'd also heard a really fascinating or perhaps a bit funny thing involving names.

I was recently told by a long established cactus vendor that his sales of macrogonus went from being among his popular items to not selling at all and instead of orders he now has actually receives criticism for even offering it -- incredibly based on Michael's dismissal of the name as invalid.

The plants do not somehow disappear or cease to exist when the names change or revisions occur. They can however disappear conceptually which is sometimes a loss rather than a gain in understanding. (Macrogonus being a prime example.)

As is also the case with santiaguensis and for spachianus, the name macrogonus is valuable for delineating a peak in a spectrum of plants that physically exist in horticulture. Discarding recognition of established plants in horticulture along with name changes seems like 'throwing out the baby along with the bathwater'. I've come to view a lot of these species as being rather like the color peak zone in one of those "color picking" fields in Photoshop or Illustrator.

What adds complexity is that what we want to call "species" are almost always 'works in progress'.

[hostilis]

Interesting. Thanks for the small history lesson. It does get very confusing. I still consider all my trichocereus plants trichs even after this whole echinopsis switch up. It all gets very confusing unless you really keep up with everything.

[trucha]

It really gets the most confusing when thinking taxonomy is practiced more like a science than being heavily politically shaped. Its easy to forget taxonomy is not actually about the plants but is entirely about how our opinions are being offered concerning how we are choosing to recognize, describe and organize them. Those opinions might be based on molecular data of one sort or another or it might be based on morphology but the meanings ascribed to the observations are opinions rather than solid facts -- such as are produced in other areas of science. I'm not saying that an observed feature is not factual but I am saying when we go on to say how that feature relates to a similar organ on another plant that part of the story is something less than factual and falls into the opinions category.

Taxonomy is primarily about people's opinions as we all work through the interesting process of recognizing and categorizing things that so many humans seem to be obsessed with.

The supergenus Echinopsis is in the middle of its deconstruction period. At least three separate groups of workers have already clearly demonstrated that Echinopsis sensu lato is polyphyletic.

Trichocereus is already back as a good name in many people's mind. In others, like mine, it never went away.

[hostilis]

Well I'm glad it's being deconstructed. For me the name Trichocereus never went away as well. I thought it was kind of stupid to be honest since I see a pretty clear difference between the small clumping echinopsis and the columnar trichs.

[☽Ţ ҉ĥϋηϠ₡яღ☯ॐ€ðяئॐ♡Pϟiℓℴϟℴ]

Its just a matter of history and synonyms.

santiaguensis has been merged into spachianus so some people have gone with that and other people are still using the original labels to show that particular material had a different name prior to the name change.

In matters of mergers that change names in a lumping fashion I'd suggest it to be of value to keep track of the original name that came with the plants (even when in error it can prove to have tracking value). Lumping is not always right and sometimes older views even get resurrected.

I'd also suggest that when deciding to update name tags on plants its better to leave the old one there and just add another one with the new name. If half a dozen name tags accumulate in a pot over time it won't be any more confusing than the literature.

wow looking back , before learning from here , lumping was definitely tempting when I first got into tricho's 2 years ago

and the original tags were only kept by hunch... phew, Priceless thread, this.