Mammillaria capensis

In the series Ancistracanthae from Baja California...

Mammillaria capensis
a big number of flowers in 2014.....

Great to see, Maurillio. My capensis pallida plants also have flowered well also, but only a couple of flowers on the hook-spined form, though it is plenty big enough.
We've just had nearly 2 weeks of temperatures between 25 and 30C, and lots of sun too. It has really helped my plants to flower.
I asked about a plant with the field number ORB13, and it claims to be capensis, though it is a round plant, and I suspect that it is dioica. I think ORB refers to an Italian enthusiast. Do you know who might know where ORB13 actually came from? If it is near Cabo San Lucas, then it shouldn't really be dioica, I think.
A mystery to solve.

Do you remember Giovanni Orbani?
He was a traveler and scientist who, died in 1999.
We talked about him sometime ago, but I do not remember about what.
I do not know if I can find something about his fn....
It would be nice if you could show us ORB13....
In my collection there are two plants with ORB fn.
They are Mammillaria vagaspina.

Hi Maurillio,
Yes, I do remember the name. I think I asked about this some time ago, years??, but here is one of the plants:



The body shape is all wrong for capensis, at least what has come into cultivation as capensis. M. capensis is described as having 1 hooked central spine and 13 radials, this plant has 16-18 radial spines, and the central spine is mostly brown, not the white base through brown to black tips of M. capensis. It falls within the spine counts for dioica, which we know to be very variable.
The flowers of capensis are quite like those of dioica, so there isn't much help there.

I think that it is dioica, but obviously Sgr. Orbani thought it to be different. He gave it the name capensis, which is the name of a species which grows south towards the Cape (Cabo San Lucas). M. dioica doesn't seem to grow further south than La Paz.

That is why I hoped someone might know where he had collected it from. It is possible that he named it after a different Cape, but he must have known the name was already in use, as it was described in 1945.

A nice investigation??