Sclerocactus

[vlani]

From location somewhere in the Natural Bridges vicinity, right in the middle of S.parviflorus territory. Flowers pink from what I can see. Plants are rather uniform looking, intermixed with S.parviflorus - which is showing the usual variation in spines color and length from plant to plant. Generally smaller than S.parviflorus.

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For comparison, typical S.parviflorus, the same location, about the same size. There are white-spinned parvuflorus plants there too.

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[A. Dean Stock]

I have photographed many of the Sclerocactus parviflorus plants at that location; some have short, barely hooked central spines but all are pretty typical S. parviflorus to my eye, although I'm not the Sclerocactus expert in the state. The first photo is an older plant while the second photo is of a fairly young plant. I have also seen white flowered forms there although the vast majority of them are light to dark pink. Spine color can vary. The area around Natural Bridges is high elevation for Sclerocactus.
Dean

[vlani]

Dean, the plants on photographs are of the same size and supposedly age. I know the pictures do not give the sense of scale. Parviflorus plants will get thicker, this ones - looks like they have already reached they limit and only grow taller.

Also, apparently, the plant in question blooms later in age - of several photographs I have only this one has buds. Parviflorus starts blooming at about half the size.

Out of 100-s of parviflorus plants I have seen, at may be 20 different locations, these ones did look odd.

[A. Dean Stock]

The plants may be the same size although they do not appear to be to me. They certainly are not the same age since one has many times more vertical rows of tubercules/areoles than the other one. They look like typical S. parviflorus to me and I've looked at hundreds of them in the Nat. Bridges Nat. Monument area. I get up that way at least once a year. The older plant is obviously of blooming age but the smaller (?) younger plant is a bit young for flowering at that elevation. I have seen plants that size in flower but they may just grow some years and not flower. I think that the plant in the second photo is a whole lot younger than you realize. Plants at higher elevations may bloom much later. I'll show the photo to Dorde Wright Woodruff. She is the premier Sclerocactus taxonomist and has seen many of the plants in that area. She is presently working on a revision of Sclerocactus.

[iann]

They certainly look unusual, but I can't imagine what they would be other than S. parviflorus. You'll have to camp out and catch the flowers

[vlani]

What would you look for in flowers? They are certainly pink in color.

[peterb]

Hi Vlani, these are usually just placed within parviflorus, mostly due to geographical proximity and pretty much identical flowers, as far as people can tell. It may well be that there is something going on warranting further study of the whole parviflorus complex across southern Utah, but you won't find these segregated out by anyone.

peterb

[vlani]

Ok, got it. I was really surprised to see a bunch of ssp names given to fairly identical S. parviflorus plants, but this clearly different plant is never even mentioned.