2 cacti with brilliant flowers need IDs

[MagiCarpus]

1) A little sun bleached...



2)



Thanks!

[Kamos]

The first one looks like Parodia haselbergii.

[MagiCarpus]

Thank you, Kamos. The form and growth habit certainly does resemble a species from the parodia genus, that narrows it down. The density of spines is, to me, much too loose for haselbergii. Correct me if I'm wrong, as perhaps the difference might be due to a variety or the environment.

[Kamos]

I'm not sure about the species, but the flowers look very haseldergii to me.

[greenknight]

I agree, looks like Parodia haselbergii. The spines are quite sparse, but that can, indeed, vary by variety (one form is nearly spineless) and environment (growing in the shade produces weaker spination, I found an in-habitat picture of some growing under trees that look much like it - http://www.cactusinhabitat.org/images/u ... 180434.JPG" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).

The mild sun-scald this one has suffered suggests it was exposed to stronger sun after having grown in low light.

[MagiCarpus]

Thank you, greenknight, for the very informative answer, extra research on cactus ID is always appreciated. Now that 2 people have chimed in for P. haselbergii, case 1 is solved
Anyone know what #2 is?

[DaveW]

The haselbergii is weekly spined through lack of light. The spination on the crown is much weaker than lower down the plant when it was grown in better conditions.

Your second plant is a Notocactus (Parodia now). One of the N. horstii/purpureus group. They went around under various names largely based on flower colour, such as N. horstii, N. purpureus, N. muegelianus etc. Strange you don't see them so much in the UK now.

https://public.fotki.com/cactus/cactus- ... age10.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://public.fotki.com/Grootscholten/ ... lia-1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/NOTOCA ... pureus.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MagiCarpus]

Okay, I shall move it to a much sunnier spot (will monitor sun sensitivity and acclimatize accordingly). Thank you for IDing the second plant DaveW, the linked profiles really helped. I have heard that identifying cacti can often be a headache due to reorganization of taxa, multiple synonyms, and relocation of genus. I guess they weren't kidding

[DaveW]

As I recall those Notocacti were either introduced by Ritter or the Horst-Uebelmann expeditions in the 1960's when seed first became available. Like many plants when newer species were discovered they lost popularity, therefore dealers no longer propagated them. A pity since they are very attractive Notocactus with reddish rather than the more common yellow flowers. I have not looked in seedlists, but they are most likely to be available as seed these days, therefore you need to raise your own.