New cactus id please

[Kamos]

Just picked this up this morning with no label.
Any ideas? It's in a 4 inch pot.
Thanks for any help.

DSC_0757.JPG (53.5 KiB) Viewed 906 times

DSC_0758.JPG (60.1 KiB) Viewed 906 times

[teo]

Cleistocactus winteri (old name Hildewintera aureispina) - they seem to grow these seedlings and then cutting the top which causes them to grow like that.

[Kamos]

Great, thank you teo! Do you think I should take off the top stems and re plant them?. They probably won't grow properly the way it is.

[DaveW]

You only need take off one at first and root it to get a normal plant. You can leave the others on until you are sure your cutting is rooted and growing.

[Kamos]

That's a great idea Dave. Thank you!

[teo]

No, just let it grow like that. Here's mine when I bought it (just like yours):

100_3760-c.jpg (43.75 KiB) Viewed 898 times

Here is how it looks today (after some re-pottings):

DSC_1726-c.JPG (33.54 KiB) Viewed 898 times

[Kamos]

Beautiful cactus teo!
Maybe I'll experiment with both... One or two cuttings, and let the others continue to grow like yours. Thanks for the reply.

[DaveW]

They branch anyway in time without the need to top them and leave a stump.

The original description showing how it grows hanging down the cliffs in habitat when Ritter attempted to publish it as the genus Winteria after his sister Frau Hildegard Winter. He changed it later to Hildewinteria since it invalidly duplicated an existing genus Winteria in the family Winteraceae, of the Magnoliales. It's been moved around quite a few different genera since then though:-

http://www.cactusandaluz.de/Text_HildewinteraRitter.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It was one of the most desirable discoveries of its time until upstaged by the discovery of it's hairy relative Hildewinteria colademononis, the specific name corrected by Hunt to colademono on moving it to Cleistocactus in The New Cactus Lexicon.

http://www.bcss.org.uk/pom092012.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/CACT ... ademononis" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[greenknight]

Commercial growers are always trying to speed up the process, and you get a branched plant sooner by topping it.

[DaveW]

It's same aim as nurserymen selling plants to the garden stores putting three or four plants in a pot to produce an artificial clump, or pinching the tops out of many garden plants to make them grow more bushy. However it seems more acceptable for garden plants than cacti where the cut stump is usually obvious and not particularly attractive.