10 January 2009
Last year’s seedlings – part 4
Posted by Stuart under: Cacti .
Here are some rather nice small white plants.
There are plenty of cacti that are small and white. Tight white spination is, after all, a good defence against ragingly bright sunlight. Quite a few of these species have been shunted around a lot, taxonomically speaking.
Turbinicarpus valdezianus, shown left, has been both Pelecyphora valdeziana and Normanbokea valdeziana, and probably other things besides. It’s obvious from its flowers, though, that it’s a turb. These seedlings are just 7 months old, having been sown last May.
Two months older, and quite a lot larger, are these Mammillaria pectinifera youngsters. M. pectinifera had its own genus to itself, once upon a time, as Solisia pectinata. It’s long since been absorbed into the genus Mammillaria, and rightly so. At this stage the pectinate spination is just beginning to assume the distinctive shape that it will have in adulthood, but from a distance you could easily be forgiven for confusing these with the turbs above.
2 Comments so far...
Julie Says:
10 January 2009 at 4:51 pm.
It is a lot of fun to see your seedlings! These are quite similar in their youth, from afar! Cute little buggers!
Stuart Says:
10 January 2009 at 5:00 pm.
Thanks Julie – they’re lovely, aren’t they? The great thing is that these don’t get any less cute as they get bigger, either 