Two Mammis to identify...

Hello everyone!!!


I have two mammillarias to identify and I have doubts...


The first has 14-15 white radial spines and 2 yellow central spines:





And this has 25 white radial spines and 2 white central spines, white at the bottom and with a dark tip, it could be some ssp. of hahnianna?

Nice pictures. You can see everything.
Need to guess.  

The preliminary assessment.
1. M. rekoi ... aureispina.
2.    m. hahniana v. bravoae.
Maybe I'm wrong.

I think you're right about #1, and probably also for #2, though I have wondered about M. albata which I think is now synonomous with M. geminispina ssp. leucocentra. The brown tips on the central spines do suggest more that it is hahniana ssp. woodsii.

Chris43 wrote:

I think you're right about #1, and probably also for #2, though I have wondered about M. albata which I think is now synonomous with M. geminispina ssp. leucocentra. The brown tips on the central spines do suggest more that it is hahniana ssp. woodsii.

Yes, i think it fits perfectly to mammillaria hahniana ssp woodsii, which was also the most likely.

In the mammillaria nº 1 what do you think? At first I thought as PVV1962 said that it could be an rekoi aureispina, but it does not fit the description of that species... the only one I saw that comes close to mine is mammillaria haageana ssp. acultzingensis... what do you think?

My plants of M. haageana ssp. acultzingensis are not as yellow as your plant. On Mammillarias.net there's a photo in the species description for M. acultzingensis that is much more like my plants.
You're right that M. rekoi aureispina should have more central spines though, so I am a bit stumped.

Hello.

I better considered the plant 1.

I was confused by the number of spines.
The difference in the growth point. Aureispina apex slightly conical.

Perhaps we should pay attention to the wreath of flowers?
On a very spiny apex. Maybe it spinosissima?

Perhaps there will be fruit.
For haageana it will be red. For rekoi and spinosissima green.

to N.mammis-ARG:
Yet a lot of confidence in identifying plants no.

.  I'm interested in the history of these plants. How did they get to you?

Chris43 and PVV1962, here I bring a picture of the body of the plant.

I bought it a few years ago in an ordinary nursery.

At first, as you can see in the picture, the central and bottom spines were mostly uncinate, so at first I thought it was mammillaria magnifica, in the last 2 years she lost the spines uncinadas and now they are straight, but they go to see below that some old ones remain in foot.

Only this year gave 3 fruits, they are light green that then turn light brown, the seeds are brown.

OK, based on what you said, and these latest photos, I am now thinking it may be Mammillaria nunezii, maybe ssp. bella? I have a couple of these plants in my collection and one has straight spines and the other with some spines hooked. I don;t think it is M. spinosissima as it has far too few centrals.

On the tag, you can write:

Series Polyacanthae with greenish fruit.
(we haven't tested backebergiana).

I found a picture of the plant when I bought it at the end of 2015 ... it was very different from what it is today.

This behaviour with spines isn't so unusual. In 2012 I was on a field trip in Mexico and found some straight spined plants at San Carlos Bay in Sonoroa. I had expected to find them, as straight spined forms of M. sheldonii(under various other names) were known to be there. I collected 1 seed pod and when I sowed it the seedlings at 1-2 yrs old all had hooked spines. Dis appointed I sold off the seedlings, all but one. At age 3-4 years the new central spines were all straight and the hooked ones were right at the base of the plant, just like the one shown here.
Both M. spinosissima and M. nunezii are known to have hooked spined forms, as well as M. rekoi having straight spined forms. Of these, I have already suggested M. nunezii, but you must remember that in a number of cases the formal description was made from plants from just one location, and do not take into account the range of natural variation in some species. This can make identification very difficult, and which is why in order to understand my plants better, I try to know where their mums and dads came from!

Here I found another photo from more than a year ago where it still has several uncinated spines...




Although I have this one that is somewhat small although I thought it was the mammillaria nunezii, it has 14-15 white radial spines and 2, 3 and 4 central spines long and straight, with a light brown tip.