Possible Mammillaria

[VickyH]

Hi all,
I thought this one was a Mammillaria rekoi but today it finally bloomed and the flower doesn't resemble that of rekoi . Have you got any ideas? Is it even a Mammillaria?
Any suggestions are welcome

[ElieEstephane]

Looks like M. Leptacantha to me

[VickyH]

Thank you Elie for your contribution.

[TimN]

Leptacantha looks good, but I'm a little confused by what looks like a flower from the plant apex. Mammillaria generally flower from older tubercles further from the apex, not brand new ones.

The mysteries of modern life!

[ElieEstephane]

Leptacantha looks good, but I'm a little confused by what looks like a flower from the plant apex. Mammillaria generally flower from older tubercles further from the apex, not brand new ones.

The mysteries of modern life!

Mamms tend to do weird stuff! Here's a polythele that flowered from the bottom all the way up and keeps flowering on the apex. It's a big plant in a 4" pot

20181015_140301-768x1024.jpg (92.83 KiB) Viewed 599 times

And here's a karwinskiana flowering only on one side. The other side the buds are closed:

20181015_140947-768x1024.jpg (103.57 KiB) Viewed 599 times

If you look up xerophila, there's a non english issue tgat shows mammillarias do weird stuff like flowering on the areole rather than the axil.
and heres another one on caactuspro

_20170803_028_152.jpg (83.85 KiB) Viewed 599 times

[TimN]

Yeah, well polytheles do a lot of strange things. You just can't trust them! I was reading a book called Teratopia that described some of the odd monstrose fruit in Mammillaria. I had one that made weird buds/offsets. Kind of like above but with a lot more spines. They never grew into anything, but they were firmly attached to the plant. It was a M. magnamamma as I recall.

Mammillaria tubercles are described as highly developed where the flowering, fruiting and offsetting/new growth functions are all the way at the apex of the tubercle, away from the areole. Unlike Coryphantha and Thelocactus where these functions are in various places along the tubercle depending on species. They also have elongated areoles to accommodate that.

[DaveW]

Mammillarias usually flower and offset from the axils, not the areole on the end of the tubercles. It may be a case of them flowering on axils that are one year old or older therefore it depends how much growth was produced the previous years therefore how far the flowers have moved from the crown.

As Elie says you can get freak flowering from the areole on rare occasions and I have also had them produce offsets on a rare occasion from the areole on the tubercle end. Also you can sometimes get buds changing into offsets and what look like initial offsets changing into flowers.

As Tim says whilst the areole and axil are now separated in many genera, in some they are still connected by a grove along the tubercle, as in Coryphantha, so presumably can be thought of as a single structure which has now divided, but on rare occasions one section can still take over the function of the other.

http://www.cactus-art.biz/note-book/Dic ... groove.htm

In the case of plants with chin like tubercles, as in Neowerdermannia, you could say the areoles are in what would be the axils in many genera.

http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/CACT ... _vorwerkii

[ElieEstephane]

I stumbled upon these crazy photos

[VickyH]

Thank you Elie, TimN and DaveW for sharing such interesting information. I love this forum since I'm constantly learning something new