Baby Macrogonus?

[Quixote]

I've seen these little cacti for sale as "Macrogonus". Would you agree on the classification?

(I know Macrogonus is a contested term, but do these little plants look like what you expect from a seedling of this species?)

Sorry for the low resolution pic...

Edited March 7, 2012 by Quixote

[mutant]

too low of a resolution for someone to really comment on the ID of those.

they look very nice and healthy specimens, whatever they are, though....

Edited March 6, 2012 by mutant

[Quixote]

Yeah, I thought so too.. might just have to buy one and see what it turns out to be I'm curious..

[ballzac]

They look more like terscheckii, or something along those lines, to me. But yeah, would need a better pic to be more confident.

[Quixote]

Even if I have a good pic, is it possible to identify seedlings like these ? (10 cm tall only) Or will it need a mature specimen?

[ballzac]

Well, you might still not get a definitive ID, but it would help. It would be easier to at least narrow it down.

[kapitän kamasutra]

They look a bit like a plant I have seen that was labelled T. tacaquirensis. They don't look like a macrogonus to me, because of the hooked spines and the colour, but I might be wrong, the small photos and the young age of the plants could be misleading.

[sueje]

Terscheckii.

[tonic]

I agree on T. tersheckii or Tershckioid. The girth for such a small size seedling would definitely point towards that species/complex. Higher res pics would definitely be helpful though. They look pretty interesting.

[M S Smith]

Yeah, they look a little like the "T. macrogonus CC757" below which was said to be from Bolivia, but also like some other alleged T. macrogonus I grew from SBE's Universal Seed Bank. I don't know what the origin of all the confusion is about, but definitely along the lines of T. tacaquirensis.

~Michael~

[TommyChesnutt]

I wonder if it gets as big as tercheckii does?

[Quixote]

Thanks all for chipping in. It's interesting, because the same vendor also sells "T. Terscheckii" as a separate plant.

I suppose that when buying a 'Macrogonus', you can get just about anything.

[C_T]

for them to be that big and fat at only 10cm, as an adult it will be a very large cactus indeed!!

[M S Smith]

Here's a similar plant I grew from seed...T. lecoriensis. The town of Lecori in southern Bolivia is a little further north than the T. tacaquirensis of Tupiza most are familiar with. I suspect T. lecoriensis is a different form of the same species. It isn't as thick as T. terscheckil when mature as far as I can tell.

~Michael~

[Quixote]

It does look very similar to the one I posted originally, but with the large thorns it looks quite diffeernt from the Pachanois and Peruvianuses that I have seen. I suppose they are not closely related - originally I thought 'Macrogonus' was a variant or very closely related to Pachanoi.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Quixote

[Evil Genius]

Hi Quixote, the plant in the picture is not what was originally meant with Trichocereus Macrogonus. Macrogonus was said to be a very spiny and glaucous form of Peruvianus. Compared to this one, it was not so fat and a lot more spiny. I saw pics from what backeberg understood as Macrogonus and it was so spiny you could barely see the body. Apart from the fact that it wasnt found again ever since, i really believe that Backeberg had pictured the right species in his books. I posted a pic of the plant somewhere in a thread around here. Just use the term backeberg and you´ll probably find it.

The one in the picture is probably something from the Terscheckii/Pasacana/Werdermannianus Group but with the wrong label. I can see that it seems to have swollen and curved spine bases whats typical for some plants from that group. Michael is probably right with Tacaquirensis. Macrogonus isnt an accepted name and is not valid anymore under use of modern taxonomy. One of the reasons is that it is considered a variety. Most forms of Pachanoi, Macrogonus and Peruvianus are so closely related they belong together.

Btw, if you buy a plant with a certain label, it doesnt have to be the correct one. I assume that more than half of the Trichos sold on the worldwide market have a wrong label. So you´d better not use one plant as a reliable way of ID´ing them.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Evil Genius

[M S Smith]

Anyone have any idea who the "CC" is from my CC757 above? It's not in the Cactus and Succulent Field Number Query.

~Michael~

PS - Here's Backeberg's T. macrogonus...

Edited March 8, 2012 by M S Smith

[Quixote]

Anyone have any idea who the "CC" is from my CC757 above? It's not in the Cactus and Succulent Field Number Query.

 

It's a long shot, but maybe it's just a misspelling of Karl Knize? People often mix up C and K...

[M S Smith]

I was hoping you were right, but alas...

http://ralph.cs.cf.ac.uk/Cacti/fieldno.php?FieldNo=kk757

~Michael~