I was working my way throught the Steven Brack seedlist last week, getting ready to place an order, and came across a name I had never seen before, M.phaeacantha FO-58. The Ralph Martin field number data base gives the location as Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo and the collection date of Sept 1984.

The name also appears in Craig's Mammillaria Handbook on page 238. Has well as the description, it was named by Lemaire in 1839. For the locality it was stated has ' reported from San Toro and Regla, Hidalgo'. The black and white photograph is of ' a seedling in our garden' but does look like a young plant of polythele obconella.

Using the inter active map on Goolge earth I was only able to find one location called Regla in the state of Hidalgo. I could find no reference to San Toro. Regla is now a suburb in the north west of the city of Pachuca, but I would imagine that at the time of its original collection Regla was probably a small village. The city of Pachuca is only 40-45 miles from the Felipe Otero collection area of Ixmiquilpan, travelling north west along Mex 85.

The description does appear to point towards polythele obconella. The next collection FO-59, which was collected at the same time has been given the name polythele and is describled as having ' long, curved, golden brown spines ' again pointing towards obconella ?

Has anyone grown this before or is still going it and do you have any further information.

Mark.

Hi Tam,
I've got a plant of FO-59 which is certainly polythele, and it has longish spines, but certainly not as long as my obconella ML004 which comes from near Venados. Both FO-58 and FO-59 are listed as being from Ixmiquilpan, so it certainly would be interesting to know why Snr Otero distinguished betwen them.
I can't find a San Toro either, but I know Regla but it's not a suburb of Pachuca. It is to the north east of Huasca de Ocampo, in Hidalgo and I know that there are polythele plants there, because it was a stop on my last day in Hidalgo when I was there in 2005. So I would certainly go with phaeacantha being a form of polythele, but whether it is distinct enough to be obconella is for me very uncertain.