ID help please!

[Eleanor]

Hi all,

I've recently picked up a few more unidentified cacti and I was hoping for some ID help on them!



Zoomed in, in case it's useful:






Zoomed in:


I think this one might be Espostoopsis/Austrocephalocereus/many-other-synonyms-as-usual dybowskii but a second opinion would be great. Rescued it from a clearance section at a local home & DIY store.


Many thanks in advance for any assistance

[Kamos]

#2 Ferocactus emoryi ?
#4 Espostoa melanostele ?

[adetheproducer]

Definitely a dybowskii. Not sure of the first.

[Eleanor]

Googled some more pictures of Ferocactus emoryi, I reckon that's a definite - thanks Kamos! Slightly surprised by the potential size it could get to, though!

I think it looks more like the dybowskii (thanks ade for the confirmation) than the Espostoa melanostele from comparison pictures (dybowskiis seem slightly more woolly and the smallest column on my cactus is doing a passable impression of a sheep in cactus form), but they do look incredibly similar so goodness knows.

[adetheproducer]

Be care with watering the dybowskii I managed to kill mine.

[Eleanor]

Thanks for the tip ade - I've recently got myself a soil moisture meter to make sure that my expanding collection is getting watered at the right times, so hopefully that will help.

I came across a picture of Mammillaria parkinsonii yesterday, which looks a little like the first picture, but I'm not completely sure.....

[greenknight]

Doesn't look like M. parkinsonii to me, more like M. spinosissima.

[Eleanor]

Thanks greenknight - I have googled and found a few images that look like mine so yes I agree it could indeed be M. spinosissima! (ssp. pilcayensis?)

Bit of a surprise though - if it is that then I now have two spinosissima! I picked up a much larger one the other weekend with some lovely flowers on it, but it's much more red-spined so at least it looks different even if it is technically the same. It seems to have quite a few less spines than the larger M. spinosissima though, do they vary quite a bit?

[CactusFanDan]

1. A form of Mamm. spinosissima for sure, maybe ernestiana.
3. Maybe a thin-spined Mamm. polythele. Nice plant whatever it is.

[greenknight]

M. spinosissima is quite variable, yes.

[Eleanor]

When I search for the ernestiana form mentioned by Dan I seem to find a lot of results for 'mammillaria backebergiana ssp ernestii' - is this the same thing under another name or something different again? (the pictures I'm finding do still look a lot like my cactus!)

The suggestion of M. polythele is certainly the closest I've seen to my cactus #3 for sure - while following the google images trail I found reference to ssp durispina (and also Mammillaria kelleriana, but I think this is now considered to be the same thing as durispina), hopefully that is about right.

A big thank you to all who have shared their knowledge to provide some answers!

[CactusFanDan]

When I search for the ernestiana form mentioned by Dan I seem to find a lot of results for 'mammillaria backebergiana ssp ernestii' - is this the same thing under another name or something different again? (the pictures I'm finding do still look a lot like my cactus!)

Same thing as far as I know.

[Eleanor]

Back again!

I "accidentally" came home with three newbies yesterday, and would value some input into the IDs. They came with labels for the species name but not the full name.

After some research, I'm thinking this one is Gymnocalycium friedrichii but a second opinion would be great.





This one is giving me a bit more trouble - the closest I've found so far is an image that is labelled Gymnocalycium damsii, but I have found a lot of fairly similar looking ones.





Third and final one - Ferocactus.... something. I've seen pictures of gracilis looking similar when small, but as with the previous one there are lots of other ones that look similar!

[greenknight]

In the nomenclature used by Cactiguide, friedrichii is considered a subspecies of Gymnocalycium mihanovichii - if it has pink flowers, it's ssp. friedrichii.

I've got a Ferocactus very similar to the last one, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe when it's older...

[Eleanor]

Thanks greenknight. Hopefully it won't take too long for that lovely bud to open and we can be sure

I'll see how the Fero gets on and will keep on comparing it to pictures as it gets older.