Mammillaria aurihamata ( Boedeker )

First description by Boedeker, Zeitschrift für Kakteenkunde 3 (15) : 340 -342 (1928)
Body: Solitary, sometimes clumping at base, globose to ovate, leaf green, 60 mm high and 40 mm in diameter.
Roots: Fibrous.
Sap: With watery sap.
Tubercule: 8 - 13 spirals, short cylindrical, keeled ventrally, 6 mm long and 3 mm wide.
Axil: With a little wool, mostly naked, but with 8 white hair-like bristles from 15 mm long.
Radial spine: 24 - 26, 8 mm long, nearly hair-like, smooth, yellowish white to white, semi-stiff, in the upper part of the body strongly ascending, later horizontal.
Central spine: 4 - 5, upper three 10 mm long, the lowest hooked and to 25 mm long, all slender acicular, smooth to somewhat pubescent, whitish yellow in youth, becoming golden yellow to brownish yellow.
Flower: Funnelform, cream yellowish or pale pinkish with reddish brown mid-veins on the outer petals,15 mm long and 12 mm wide.
Fruit: Red, clavate, small, 8 mm long and 3 mm wide.
Seed: Brownish black, oval with lateral hilum, 1 mm in diameter.
Minimum temperature: 5° - 10° C.
Habitat Substrate: Between lime stone rocks, under bushes in black humus. Geographic Distribution: Mexico, San Luis Potosi, near Real de Catorce. Altitude 2500 meter.
Bibliography: Craig: The Mammillaria Handbook: 153 - 154 and Mitteilungsblatt des AfM: 1/91; 6 - 11


Photo: AdB

Hi Hugo,
There is more bibliography than the two references you include - these are Fitz-Maurice, Cactus and Succulent Journal (US) 62(1): 10 (1990), and Hunt, Mammillaria Postscripts 6:3,14 (1997); and also 10(1998).
The suggestions from these last two articles is that this plant is only a form of crinitia ssp crinita, although the Fitz-Maurices seem to be more extreme lumpers even than Hunt.
I have, like you no doubt, a number of the plants that these two people lump into crinita, some of which are admittedly pretty close, but I certainly can't go along with the more extreme views. This one does look a pretty plant, so if you get success in tracking down one, bear me in mind if you would.
It is reminiscent of a plant that I have which was originally called puberula, and which as it has grown older, has lost most of its pubescent spines, and looks much like this, especially in flower.

Thanks Chris, I've sown aurihamata 3 weeks ago ( seed from Aymeric de Barmon) and germination is poor, only 6 seeds are germinated. The attached picture is one from de Barmon, so I hope that the seedlings will have the same look. But no bad words about the seeds of Aymeric, the rest of seeds I've ordered were germinated almost all. I have a plant called pubispina, and also lumped to crinita, but it is completely different from aurihamata

Hugo, the crinita complex is just that - very complex!!
I have plants that apparently belong to crinita that have light spines, some which have darker centrals, sometimes 1 hooked, up to 1 hooked and 3 straight......
And some of the seeds that I've sown from this complex, although from the same seed packet, have grown up with different coloured centrals, some light brown some almost black. I know that these plants can vary a lot, some of the articles by the Fitz-Maurices are clear evidence of that - if you go as far as they do in lumping. But if they had their way they'd merge M. wildii into crinita as well.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how your seedlings develop, and whether there is variation in them, and if so how much. Come back here in a year or so.....