Arizona Queen of the Night, Deer-Horn Cactus, Reina de la Noche, Night-Blooming

Arizona Queen of the Night, Deer-Horn Cactus, Reina de la Noche, Night-Blooming Cereus
Peniocereus greggii var. transmontanus

Hi Xenomorf,
What do you say to this comment of Ed he sent me today. He is one of the cactus rescue team in Tucson and saw many Penio greggii v. transmontanus?

"Jürgen, I just ran across your pics on Daves Garden of the Peniocereus greggii v. transmontanus. ....
BTW-The first 2 by Xenomorf. If those are v. transmontanus they must be inflated with air. greggii v. greggii is my guess. Note the thickness at the base also....Ed Bartlett"

Jordi

Could he quote the text and from which reference it is from?

I'll quote from the book "Cacti of Texas and neighboring States" by Weniger...
"Old stems shrink, lose areoles and ribs, become brownish, woody and circular".
The desciption in this book makes no distinction between the two varieties.

Look at the first photo Full Sized and you'll see the left-hand younger branch in the center of the photo which has the the deep ribs feature.

In "The Cactus Family" by Anderson it differentiates the two different varieties by citing the location in habitat and the flower size and elevation only, it dosen't state any differences for the stems. The description for the stems are the same according to Anderson's book.

Xeno.

Xeno,
That's the problem when one is depending on books for IDing. And especially of those books which are lexicon style and have only a short description of the plant. Even worse if the are written by lumpers like Anderson or Hunt.
After seeing the plants in habitat it's much easier to notice the differences.
But to make things clearer, where did you take the photos of this plant or if it is in your yard, where did you get the plant from (AZ or MEX,NL)?
Maybe the v. transmontana grows really that plumped up when kept in good care in cultivation.

Jordi

From reading many Cactus books, I feel that Anderson has done a pretty good job of making a distinction between varieties/subspecies and explaining the differences between them. And he expalins no differences between the stems. But he Does tell the differences in flower size, location in habitat, and elevation.

Weniger says the stems, apparently of both varieties are the same also (they "inflate" with age).
My question is, how can Ed tell the difference just from stems without knowing any other details about it?.....which are......

The plant was photographed at the Desert Botanical Gardens, and I feel that it is more likely that they recieved it in thier collection from being clollected/salvaged in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona rather than the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico. I have been on many rescues in the Tucson area and also in the Phoenix area and have seen quite a few of them also.

The young stem I have photographed looks identical to the other transmontanas's I have seen in habitat in southern AZ and that are in the PlantFiles already.

I'll put the question to you another way...
Since it seems you are down on lumpers, which is not implying what my opinion on lumpers/splitters is, what book would you say or would Ed say that 'Dosen't" lump the P. greggii.?

Xeno.

This message was edited Sep 3, 2009 8:10 PM

Xeno,
because you took the photo in DBG this plant is indeed most likely a pampered v. transmontanus.

Regarding books in which the greggii vars are not lumped, there is K. Backeberg 'Die Cactaceae', Helia Bravo-Hollis 'Las Cactáceas de México' and G. Engelmann 'Cactaceae of the Boundary'.

The following photos taken from these books are NOT 'copyright CactusJordi'!

And I think though the vars are certainly closely related one should keep them apart in particular when producing seeds to avoid production of intermediate forms which might not exist in nature.

BTW my splitter-tendency is the result of almost 40 years visiting habitats of Pediocactus simpsonii in the western states of the US. They grow from WA down to NM in so many different shapes (but homogeneous within their colonies) and there were just 2-3 hardly accepted var names. What untypical mix would I have produced only pollinating the taxon from Vernell, UT with that of Bicknell, UT let alone the one from Ginko Petrified Forrest in WA with the plants from Sandia Mts in NM.

Jordi




This message was edited Sep 5, 2009 4:06 PM

And here are the drawings in Engelmann's Boundary book

the P. greggii v transmontanus

And the reality. Left the var. gregii with thicker stem and ellipsoid areoles and right the var. transmontanus with smaller and usually circular areols.

I was considering buying one of those books. Amazon.com is wanting $1500 for 'Cactaceae of the Boundary' which seems to be the one in my Language. But that's a little bit out of my budget range.

It would be out of my budget range too. I have a reprint of 1986, which has been issued by a Kaktus club in Germany celebrating its 25 anniversary. I think I paid ~ 200.- Deutschmarks = ~ 100$ for it.

But now there is a dilemma. The 3 photos I took from the books carry 'copyright CactusJordi' which is not correct! Can this be removed?

Jordi

The whole thread including my photo would have to be deleted. You could possibly put an edit in the replies that says "This photo is copyright of......."