Short columnar Echinopsis

[Brunãozinho]

Hi! So, this plants are from a friend who has a nursery, he told me they are "Echinopsis lua", they even have a tag with this ID for this species... I searched for this ID on the web and got nothing... so, I supposed this might be a hybrid between E. subdenudata and a columnar one (?)... what do you think?
He also told me his source of ID's are the names that come with plants and seeds he gets from the nursery owned by Leopoldo Horst's family.

[vlani]

Hard to tell, it could be just subdenudata proper. Hybrids are usually spiny - because all other kinds of echinopsis to cross with are spiny

[Brunãozinho]

Oh, I didn't think about the others being not spiny.
I thought E.subdenudata didn't get so columnar, and also the name E. lua was quite strange to me.

[greenknight]

Not all the others are spiny - for instance, Echinopsis eyriesii has spineless and near-spineless forms. It can be a short columnar, too, and many hybrids have been grown from it.

[DaveW]

Most of Horst's stuff had HU numbers (=Horst-Uebelmann) as he collected both with Uebelmann and for his nursery:-

"HU Stands for Leopoldo Horst and Werner Uebelmann, a Swiss nurseryman who distributed material supplied by Horst. HU numbers are said to be taxon numbers only, collected from a variety of locations in some instances. Uebelmann sold his nursery in 1980. Uebelmann and Leopoldo Horst made their last trip together in 1985. From then onwards the HU numbers were continued by Uebelmann and Horst's son Kurt Ingo Horst, after Leopoldo Horst's death. Andreas Hofacker also made three trips to Brazil with Ingo Horst and most HU numbers between HU 1300 and HU 1700 have a synonymous AH number."

I wonder if LUa could be a misreading of the badly written or faded collection number HU plus a number? Maybe Horsts family cannot read his original faded labels now, though I would expect them to know they were HU numbers.

They seem to have collected very few Echinopsis compared to the hundreds of Notocactus and Frailea's they list. In fact a quick scan of my HU numbers list which goes to HU 2058 only turns up the following, though I may have missed the odd one:-

HU 377 Echinopsis calochlora Pico do Urucum, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil
HU 1076 Echinopsis sp. Salto, Dept Salto, Uruguay
HU 1090 Echinopsis sp. Unistalda, Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil
HU 1091 Echinopsis sp. Santiago, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
HU 1120 Echinopsis sp. Dom Pedrito, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
HU 1121 Echinopsis eyriesii aff. Dom Pedrito, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
HU 1122 Echinopsis sp. Julio de Castilhos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
HU 1477 Echinopsis sp. Pedras Altas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
HU 1566 Echinopsis sp. Mercedes, Prov. Corrientes, Argentina
HU 1570 Echinopsis sp. Goia, Prov. Corrientes, Argentina
HU 1571 Echinopsis sp. Goia, Prov. Corrientes, Argentina
HU 1611 Echinopsis leucantha, La Rioja, Prov. La Rioja, Argentina
HU 1637 Echinopsis leucantha, Cafayate, Prov. Salta, Argentina
HU 1644 Echinopsis silvestrii, El Caril, Prov. Salta, Argentina
HU 1692 Echinopsis tarijensis, Humahuaca, Prov. Jujuy, Argentina
HU 1715 Echinopsis sp. El Caril, Prov. Salta, Argentina
HU 1119 Echinopsis sp. Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

I would think it's likely it one of the Echinopsis sp. above, probably even an as yet unnamed species.

http://www.kakteen.org/horstuebelmanne.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Brunãozinho]

Thanks for the info, Dave.

Yes, maybe the name is related to a misreading of Horst's writings. The tags with the species names are the same used at Horst's nursery and they keep it separated from E. subdenudata.
The owner of the nursery where the pic was taken worked for a long time with Mr.Ingo and they frequently went together to the field looking for different species, so I might ask him for any other information the next time I see him.

I don't know if it's normal for a very old E.subdenudata to get this tall, (?) or if maybe it's just a characteristic of a specific population.

[DaveW]

Of course Echinopsis lua could be a misread of a faded label for the start of Echinopsis leucantha but it's not spiny enough for that species though possibly somebody transposed the label from an E. leucantha that Horst also collected:-

http://www.bihrmann.com/travel/arg/cac/ ... %201-4.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cactus Explorer number 8 contains an article on the Echinopsis of the area Horst collected in:-

http://www.cactusexplorers.org.uk/journal6.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Spineless and spiny plants often grow in the same population and have received different specific names in the past, although all the same species.

[phil_SK]

I would say these are fairly typical of plants labelled E. subdenudata and, as such, are unlikely to have been collected by anyone using HU numbers. E. subdenudata seems to have been collected only a few times (Cardenas, Knize) and only in Bolivia. Mats Winberg's MN532 http://www.succseed.com/seeds-cacti/ech ... aco-b.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (still from Bolivia) doesn't look quite like the 'standard' form - I wonder if it is something else?

Even if you take the view that E. subdenudata is just a spineless variant of ancistrophora, this more widespread plant doesn't seem to have been collected by anyone else in Misiones or Corrientes (both up in the NE of Argentina, against the Brazilian border) and certainly not in Uruguay or Brazil. It is likely that most of HU's "Echinopsis sp." are oxygona. I have small plants of HU1038, 1090 and 1119 and would say that these are all oxygona.

Given how popular E. subdenudata is commercially (fuzzy navel and dominos or dominoes seem to be superfluous cultivar names that have appeared to make it even more commercially attractive) it's not hard to imagine that the nursery has coined a new name for it - Google Translate tell me that 'lua' is Portugese for 'moon' - is that right?

[Brunãozinho]

I just have just read the article Dave mentioned. It seems Echinopsis species in those areas can show many variations.

Phil, yes it means "moon" in portuguese, I thought about it meaning the same in latin, but then it would be "luna". I also wondered about that name, but couldn't associate this cactus with the term "lua".
It could be just a variety of subdenudata and they gave it a new commercial name.

[Brunãozinho]

Just to leave here the last information I have got about this plant. The owner of the nursery where the pic was taken told me this cultivar is a hybrid of nursery origin, wich seeds were sent to Mr.Horst, they knew it was a hybrid, so the name "Lua" might be just for commercial purposes.