Cacti in Paraguay to be identified

Vinke · Post by **Vinke** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 3:51 pm

Hello all!

two sentences about us, before coming in with questions. We are living in Paraguay and love to be in nature to take photos of our beautiful surrounding. When re-niewing our homepage we had to see, that there are some cacti to be identified.

Maybe you have a guess. All photos are taken in the nature (Gran Chaco, Paraguay).

Now let's start:

Thanks in advance
Thomas & Sabine

gunhat · Post by **gunhat** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:10 pm

Could nr 1, 3 and 4 be the same species, namely Gymnocalysium hamatum ?

Gunnar

Post by **daiv** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 9:32 pm

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for sharing these great pictures of plants in habitat! I love seeing plants in their native surroundings. Feel free to post as many as you like.

I'll have to get back to you on ID, but having a location will be a big help.

Gunnar is pretty good with Gymno ID.

ondy · Post by **ondy** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:36 am

Yeah I'm with Daiv. THanks for sharing and show some more. I like Gymnos a lot.

Andy

Mike A · Post by **Mike A** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:21 am

#2 is beautiful!

Parodia mammulosa for the last?

Vinke · Post by **Vinke** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:27 am

Dear Gunnar!

Thank you for help. You are right right 1,3,4 are the same cacti species. But we think G. hamamatum does not fit. But by googeling your tip we got many interessting sides and now we know the species for sure. It's Gymnocalycium megatae. This fits perfect with the habitat and habitus. We own a piece of land in the west of the Gran Chaco wirh a big grass savannah. And there it's very common. This vegetation type is called "campo" here. We found the information here:
http://www.richtstatt.de/gymnos/standort/g_megatae.htm
At first we thought it's G. eurypleurum, but the description of G. eurypleurum says it's perfers dry forest, but there we never saw the species which we asked here. We found one page where G. eurypleurum grows in community with Echinopsis and this is a very hard clay-type soil in lowland which is frequently flooded after rain. "Our" cactus is only growing on sandy soil.

Thanks again for your help, that leaded us to the right information!

@all: Has anybody an idea about the cactus tree or a good page for searching?

@Daiv & Andy
Thank you for your welcome. We attach for you a view of Harissa bonplandii which grows wild in our garden and a very special one G. paediophilum which is endemic on Cerro Leon the only hill of the Gran Chaco, which we want to visit urgently, because it's one of the most beautiful places here!

Hasta pronto
Thomas & Sabine (still waiting for rain at the end of the drytime)

Mike A · Post by **Mike A** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:46 am

So when are we all coming to visit you in Paraguay?

gunhat · Post by **gunhat** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:10 pm

According to my book G. megatae is a synonym for G. tudae. Tudae was my first guess, but my book says it's only 6 cm high, and your picture seems to show a larger plant. But tudae must be very variable and is listed with many synonyms in my book, so of course some of them could be higher.

My book says that G. hamatum grows in Gran Chaco - Bolivia, but I see from the map that Gran Chaco extends into Paraguay. Thats why I thought that hamatum also could grow in Paraguay.

Perhaps they are the same species. Could Daiv check?

I edit this post cause I found some information on internet that confirms my suspicion:

Scientific Name: Gymnocalycium marsoneri Y. Ito
Synonym: Gymnocalycium onychacanthum, Gymnocalycium hamatum, Gymnocalycium pseudomalacocarpus, Gymnocalycium fricianum, Gymnocalycium tudae, Gymnocalycium megatae, Gymnocalycium tortuga

(Link: http://www.desert-tropicals.com/Plants/ ... oneri.html )

But what is the correct name? Could someone check.

Gunnar

Vinke · Post by **Vinke** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 3:10 pm

Hi Gunnar,

this picture of G. megatae is really perfect fitting. The most of them we found are about 10 cm high, but once we found a huge specimen about 15 cm height. But this must not be a problem, if they really are synonyms. On the page we mentioned above is written, that espacially near the frontier to Bolivia this cactus (G. megatae) is really high. Which name the correct one is, would be of interest, hope somebody will find some information.

We expect to get a flower in the next days at one specimen we have near the house. We will send a picture of it, if it's of interest.

@Mike A, as soon as all cacti are identified

or at least wait until it starts to rain, at the moment it's terrible dry!

Best wishes
Thomas & Sabine

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:44 pm

Hi Gunnar,

I am pretty sure that Desert Tropical follows the classification in Anderson's book, the Cacti Family, so if you go by his system, marsoneri is the name. Of course, as you know, lots of folks don't use that system.

Buck Hemenway · Post by **Buck Hemenway** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:49 pm

All,

Ted Anderson's, The Cactus Family, lists all of these names as synonyms for G. marsoneri. Specifically - G. megatae, G. onychacanthum, G. tudae, G. tortuga, G. fricianum, G. pseudomalacocarpus, G. matoense, and G. hamatum. The variable species has a distribution from Gran Chaco, Mato Grosso and in Paraguay. The Brazilian population is considered a subspecies G. marsoneri ssp. matoense.

Just wait for The New Cactus Lexicon next year for the latest confusion.

Buck

faslimy · Post by **faslimy** » Wed Oct 26, 2005 3:07 am

Buck Hemenway wrote:
Just wait for The New Cactus Lexicon next year for the latest confusion.

/sigh, ain't that the truth

Post by **daiv** » Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:02 am

OK, this is going to take some work on your part for ID on the "Cactus Tree". It is definately a Cereus, but could be any of the ones listed below. I listed them in the order of which I thought was most likely. These species all grow in Paraguay. If you are so inclined, perhaps you can seek out each one and share pictures with the rest of us.

C. stenogonus
C. pachyrhizus
C. hildmanianus
C. lamprospermus

Also if you have some different angles and close-ups that might help.

Daiv

Vinke · Post by **Vinke** » Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:46 am

Hi Daiv,

thank you very much, we will try to find out. The picture is a slide, so we can post a close up of every part in the following size. Maybe that's helpful for you.

Maybe the information is useful, that we do have 2 completly different parts of Paraguay, West of the River Paraguay is the Gran Chaco a flat area with palm savannahs near the river and dry thorny forest at the rest. East of the river it's a much more humid climate including rain forest. This picture is from Cerro Leon, the only hill in the north of the Gran Chaco, an extreme dry climate.

Thomas & Sabine

Cacti in Paraguay to be identified

Cacti in Paraguay to be identified

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