20 June 2008
First time for Selenicereus
Posted by Stuart under: Cacti .
I received this plant labelled as Selenicereus pteranthus. I’m not convinced; the stems in all other illustrations of S. pteranthus that I’ve found look far more like those of S. grandiflorus than like my plant, so I’m fairly certain it’s mislabelled. The flower buds, too, are almost identical at this stage to those on my Selenicereus spinulosus.
Time will tell…
2 Comments so far...
Anonymous Says:
6 July 2008 at 1:51 pm.
hello, this plant is indeed not S.pteranthus wich is recognized by very short bulbous, dark colored spines and only 4-5 ribs. The different forms of “long spined” Selenicereus “species” would include S.urbanianus, S.coniflorus and several forms of S.grandiflorus. Please keep in mind the original description of S.grandiflorus was of a plant with many ribs, long spines and medium(!) sized flowers, and that most “grandiflorus” that are shown in books are infact S.pteranthus. Your plant is certainly not S.spinulosus wich is very different from this plant
Good luck
Stuart Says:
6 July 2008 at 2:35 pm.
Interesting, thanks - which suggests that the plants which are generally circulating as S. grandiflorus aren’t that species at all but something closer to S. pteranthus. How confusing. I’ve just written a new post which suggests that the plant I have as pteranthus is actually the same as my spinulosus; what I need to do, really, is take my copy of the NCL up to the greenhouse and sort this out once and for all… thanks for your help.