This has been a great fall for Mamms. This first one is a new species for me and came with no id. The best match, particularly of the flower, seems to be M. schumanii. The base of the plant is solid like a stump with each head of the cactus solidly attached, not like usual pups. I kind of wonder if I am even in the correct genus. It is rather small, 3 inches across at the widest and 1 1/2 inches tall. Thanks for looking.
Bill
Another noid new acquisition. Am still studying on this one. There several that seem close.
Bill
Lable on this one says M. huitzilopochtlii (there's a mouthful! ) and I believe that is correct.
Last for now isM. melanocentra. Of the two I have one blooms at least twice a year and the smaller one never! It puts out the fuzz as the bloomer does but never a bud. These are fairly large, the flowering one is 8 inches in diameter and the other is 6 1/2 inches. If I'm wrong on any of these please let me know. Thanks,
Bill
Your first set of photos that you thought might be M. schumanii: I'm not sure it is a Mammillaria.
Where are the flowers coming out? In Mammillaria, the tubercle is always split into two clearly separated parts. The tip has spines and the base part is always spineless, but may have some bristles or wool. The base part is where it flowers. The flowers are always in a ring on last year's growth.
Crawl inside there and see what you can see. 8')
The good part is that Mammillaria seed capsules are pretty distinctive. You may have some of those soon.
Maybe Escobaria or Coryphantha (they may have been combined).
Daisy
Hi, Daisy! Thanks for your great response. The flowers arise from between the tubercles much like the mamms. The buds--I looked with a 30 power loupe--are bare as are the area around them. No hairs anywhere. Here are some more pictures as close as I can get. I think you can see that the balls of the top are attached to a very solid woody base. That's unlike any other clumping mamm I've ever dealt with. I'd be very leery of trying to separate this plant. I'll start looking at Escbaria and Coryphantha. You probably noticed that I was beginning to doubt that this was a mamm from my original comment.
I was in Reno last week and got to enjoy my first hard freeze of the year, first snow going up 395 toward Susanville Wednesday morning early and caught my first cold of the year from being around all the people...ugh on all counts!!
Bill
This message was edited Nov 9, 2015 5:06 AM
My M. huitzilopochtlii is blooming now too
Hi Nancy! It is a treat to have the fall doldrums brightened by the mamms. Where I am located we are busy packing the plants in and getting serious about winter watering schedules so these bright spots are a great treat. That is a nice healthy looking plant. Thanks for sharing.
Here's my M. decipiens camptotricha this morning. Not large nor spectacular but still a treat. It seems very rot prone so is my primary indicator of me getting carried away with the water.
Bill
Rockminer, for the plant in the first post of this thread check out M. hernandezii. Your plant looks like a slightly more 'open' version of it. Flowers and spines look very similar. Could be that your plant is getting a little less sun than it wants.
mcvansoest could be onto something. Look at this:
http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/MAMMILLARIA/Mammillaria_hernandezii/Mammillaria_hernandezii/mammillaria_hernandezii.htm
And this:
http://www.huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/ISI/ISI2011/2011-10.html
All right! This is far and away the best match yet. The arrangement of stamens and pistil match and the root structure is right on. Thanks so much mcvansoest and Daisy for the great links. Duly labeled! !
Bill
Yeh!!! One down..........
I had one a while back - I managed to kill it unfortunately - and was browsing pictures for something else and came across it and thought it resembled your plant. Great links, thanks Daisy!
I have some Mammillarias working towards blooming and one already spectacularly in flower: M. karwinskii ssp. nejapensis (pic attached). Growing Mammillarias here is a lot of trial and error, most set out quite well but finding the right amount of sun/shade and water during the summer months is a challenge especially for NOIDs but even for ones that I know the ID of. Very rewarding though!
The 1st is definitely mamm. Hernandezii!
Thanks George. I always appreciate confirmation of any id.
My poor sunburned nejapensis is also starting to pop. It has been a pretty reliable bloomer but never as dense of blooms as yours mcvansoest. Thank you for sharing.
Bill
Nice cactus mcvansoest. It seems to be one of the Mamms that divide dichotomously.
http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/MAMMILLARIA/Mammillaria_karwinskiana/Mammillaria_karwinskiana_nejapensis/Mammillaria_karwinskiana_nejapensis.htm
I always get excited when I see one.
I had a Mammillaria hernandezii also and managed to kill it. I think I watered it too much in the summer here in Phoenix. I agree with you, mcvansoest, it is hard to get watering and sun right. It just seems when it is so hot that the cactus (especially small ones in pots) need more watering. However, rot happens really quickly! Here is my M. nejapensis 'Owl Eyes'. No buds yet. I just moved it into more sun for the winter and hope it gets moving soon.
rockminer: I love your M. decipiens camptotricha with the great spines and nice white flowers!
Thanks Nancy. It is a fun and fast cactus if one gets the water right. I rotted and beheaded about 3 times before I got it right! It then clumped and up very rapidly. It was broken down for the third time since I have had it and the one shown is one of 28 babies.
Bill
My experience with that plant has been similar in both respects (risk of rot/prolific growth). Those curly spines are awesome.
Three other Mammillarias on the balcony at the moment (first is unknown), all looking wooly, flowers on the way. Third plant (plumosa) has a reputation for being rot prone but I leave it out in the winter rain and it does just fine. The key seems to be a porous pot (unglazed clay or pumice rock) that allows it to dry out very fast afterward in the sun.
This message was edited Nov 28, 2015 4:47 PM
M. plumosa is one of my favorites. Mine has not bloomed this fall...yet. I keep mine pretty much like M. decipiens as far as water and coarse substrate. Agree about unglazed clay pots. Am treating my hernandezii the same way.
We are staying very cold, in the teens and 20s so maybe too cool for blooms now in the gh. I'm already ready for spring.
Bill
Baja: Your first Mamm in the photos on Nov. 28th looks like my M. nejapensis 'Owl Eyes'. Looks like it has blooms coming too.
Thank you Nancy. It makes flowers but I've never seen fruit. The plant seems to grow ridiculously slowly... would that be true for yours as well?
Mine has never had fruit either. Mine was one plant and grew and split pretty quickly, but since then (over a year ago), it has not grown.
Mine is a reliable bloomer but despite attacks with a small camel brush I have been unable to set fruits. Perhaps they need a pollinator.
My M. melanocentra that has never bloomed has finally come through. A nice ring of buds but as happens in winter only one or two open at the same time.
Bill
After seeing your pictures of the M. Plumosa, I checked on mine and found it was rotting. I managed to save most of it.
It really is a bummer to find that our good intentions can result in damage to our treasured plants. This time of year, at least in my zone, seems to be the biggest threat for watering. I really have to force myself to not water.
Good luck with the recovery!
Bill
I have killed every M. Plumosa I have ever owned. I hope you save a couple pieces.
Daisy
For what it's worth, I've always given the plant as much sun as possible, on the theory that the dense plumage probably blocks a lot of the sun, and softens whatever does get through. In my case that means day-long sun (southern exposure) but in any case I would imagine that the stronger the light, the less critical the water management. Strong light also has a positive effect on the evaporation through the container, in the case when it's unglazed clay.
I realize that options are limited when you're overwintering, just sharing my experience in case it improves your odds.
My experience with plumosa is that it needs extremely fast draining soil. I had two that I got at the same time, one I put in a glazed pot with a soil the water pretty much runs through. The other I planted in the ground in pretty loamy soil... I still have the potted plant, the one in the soil was gone within six months.... I tried to save some of the individuals out of the clump, but had absolutely no luck. So good luck with those pieces you managed to save: very fast draining soil and no water at all till you know you have new roots....
Thanks for your tips and concerns. I'm trying to get away from using glazed pots. I've been buying some that are just glazed on the outside. I'm trying to switch some out of the glazed into clay, but so many plants and so little time. The M. plumose bloomed last winter, so my crazy thinking, they normally take more water when they bloom. Though I didn't give it much, still the wrong choice.
Yeah, I am with you on the clay pots, if I use them I make sure they are glazed on both sides (in and out) or not at all. And I mostly use those for pots in the areas where we entertain people...
I have most of my Mammillarias in hanging baskets, hanging off the patio roof, so they get about half day (morning) sun. For a lot of them that has been working really well, but not for all.
Attached a few pictures of some that in flower (the pictures of my M. plumosa that is in flower are still on my camera, so I will get to them later).
1. M. solisioides - very slow grower and I have not managed to catch it with its flower fully open.
2. M. vetula ssp. gracilis (originally bought as M. gracilis var. fragilis), nice pretty fast growing clumper. It has been a very consistent flowerer, but is starting to get to the point where it is crowding out the other Mammillarias in the basket.
3. M. ??? - I have the ID somewhere, but this was a hanging basket with plastic hooks that attached the basket to the string that allows it to hang. Plastic does not survive very long in the sun here at all.... so the basket made an unfortunately plummet to the ground where everything got jumbled up - I will have to find the pictures of when I put the basket together where I photographed plants with labels.... which I have not yet done. Pretty flowers though.
Yes, pretty flowers. Nice color change from bud to bloom on the first one.
However you end up handling the difficult Mammillarias (eg. plumosa), I would say that just about every detail that favors their survival relates to the soil going bone dry or close in between watering. You can accomplish that by adding rock, or using clay pots, or waiting longer in between watering, or some combination of the above. Bill sort of made this point earlier.
There's no need for them to sit dry like that for any extended period.... as long as they get there every time, you can water as often as you want (climate permitting). That's been my experience anyway. I don't protect any of my Mammillarias from our winter rainfall (very mild temps here of course) and they don't suffer from it. Because they're in clay pots in the sun and when the clouds go away, they dry right out again.
Bill, Sorry to hijack your thread but heard a great story yestertday.
One of my friends says her office has a huge cactus (she was indicating about 5 ft with her hands). They don't know what it is or how to care for it sooo... they watch the weather in Arizona and if it rains there, they water the cactus!
Don't you love it?
The snow has finally melted. I hope my cactus survived their month under snow.
Daisy
Hi Daisy,
Too many years ago I was given a bunch of cuttings from AZ and southern CA and did the same thing with sad results--rot and etoliation. Figured my light and temp made that a poor strategy.
We are having a warm monsoon right now and my creek is about up to my pump house. My outdoor cacti look pretty sad after sub zero temps and now the rain. I'm ready for spring.
Never worry about hijacking one of my threads. My attitude is that we come here for knowledge, yes, but maybe even more importantly for fun.
Thanks for writing,
Bill
Smashed cactus: As I recall, your plants are downstairs in your house in winter. M. plumosa needs very strong light, as well as very careful watering. It can take a lot of sun even here in Phoenix, so it can take all you can give it where you are!
Yes Nancy. They are all fighting for light. I have had this plant for seversl years. Just didn't make it this year.
Another strong candidate might be Mammillaria sheldonii. Although it can be tedious, an excellent way to nail the i.d. is by way of spine count and description of both radials and centrals. And whether the sap is watery or milky. I have a copy of the Mammillaria Handbook. If you want to d-mail me that info, I might be able help you out.
