mammillaria meyranii

mammillaria meyranii is described with two central spines, why all pictures i have seen, present many more central spines?

this is my mammillaria meyranii ML 48





this plant is labelled ML 48 and come from an italian greenhose near reggio emilia.



chris davies one in an old post about meyranii






and this is an old photo of hugo de cook on mammillaria.net

A very interesting question!

The photo of one of my plants was labelled originally as M. guerreronis Lau 1096, but after a lot of discussion it seemed closer to M. meyranii than anything else, despite its rather numerous central spines.

However.....take a look at this plant, M. meyranii Rep 969



and a crop of this photo showing the head on the right....just abut clear enough to count centrals......



On the larger head and the younger darker head, there are 4 cenral spines, but on the right hand head there are mostly just 2.

The only conclusion I can come to is that (assuming the experts ...Lacoste..Reppenhagen...Lau) are right in identifying the species, then the description is rather limited, and only some plants have 2 central spines, many plants have a lot more.