Mammillaria multiseta

First Description: Allg. Gartenz. 17: 242. 1849

Body: Solitary or clumping, globose, later becoming cylindrical at age, 60 - 220 mm high and 60 - 100 mm in diameter, with sunken apex, dull green.
Roots: Fibrous.
Sap: With latex.
Tubercle: Pyramidical, often keeled, medium set, 12 - 14 mm long and 7 - 11 mm thick with oblique rounded tips. Areoles are round,sunken, 2,5 mm in diameter with some white wool at first, later becoming naked.
Axils: With white wool and sometimes bristles.
Radial spines: 4 - 7, 3 - 10 mm long, radiating, straight, glatt, glassy white to yellowish with darker tips.
Central spines: 1, 7 - 22 mm long, thicker than the radials, straight or somewhat curved, glassy white to glassy yellow, base and tips are brown.
Flowers: Funnelform, 18 - 22 mm long and wide, pinkish with darker midveins.
Fruit: Club shaped with flower rest, pink to karmine with whitish base, 15 - 25 mm long and 3 - 5 mm wide, ripens 12 months after flowering.
Seed: Brown, drop to kidney shaped, 1 mm long and 0,8 mm wide; Hilum subbasal and small; Selfsterile.
Geographic Distribution: South of Puebla ( Chiautla) and In the north of Oaxaca. Altitude between 500 - 1900 meter. Growing on brown silicat rocks in black humus and moss.
Bibliography: Reppenhagen, die Gattung Mammillaria: 313, page 776.

two mammillaria multiseta labelled in my collection.

flowerd in may

I take it you saw my post on your zuccariniana thread. To me these fall under M.karwinskiana karwinskiana.

I think that the identification of M. multiseta to be a confused and often mis-used name is clear from the discussion here and in the thread on M. zuccariniana?

My personal view is that both of these plants fall into the category of M. multiseta sensu Reppenhagen, and are closer to M. mystax that M. karwnskiana.

But there is no hard and fast dividing line. In habitat in Puebla and northern Oaxaca, you can find plants that fall between carnea. mystax and karwinskiana, having only some of the key characteristics that we would see in the formal descriptions, but not necessarily all together and distinct. So some plants will have axillary wool, some bristles only, some none, some have short central spines, some only subcentrals, some only radials, some divide dichotomously, some offset, some do both....

That is why there are something like 30 different species names erected over the years that cover these plants.

Botanically there may well be only 3 species, but each cover a wide range of variation, and these forms appear to overlap. So making a hard and fast allocation to one species name or another is a bit like Russian Roulette.