Mammillaria discolor - dark flowered variant

In these days is in flower a Mammillaria discolor FO 108 with big magenta flowers.
The plant was sowed in 1988....

In Mammillaria discolor fruits are described greenish-white, pink below.
In FO 108 with magenta flowers, in these days we can see fruits bright red......

That's a very interesting form, with the red fruits. Lovely plant!

I wonder how variable fruit colour is. We tend to watch more closely variations in flower colour, but I haven't seen much comment about fruit colour.

Hi Maurillio,  You seem to have doubts. I too think this is not discolor. Perhaps haageana ssp. conspicua

I found this plant in an old collection dismissed and was labelled Mammillaria discolor FO 108 - magenta.
I'm fool of doubts about it.

From the same collection another Mammillaria discolor FO 108 with regular colour flowers but with bright red fruits.
Flowerin and fruiting of the two are contemporary....

In my other Mammillaria discolor the fruit colour is greenish-white, pink below....

Certainly the flower of your second plant looks much more correct for M. discolour. But again we have red seed pods.

FO-108 was found in 1985. It is likely that seed sown in 1998 would have been either from collected plants or habitat collected seed.

However, I am more likely to think that the second plant is right, because the first plant has significant amount of axillary wool, which is not according to the description of scant wool or naked axils.

Of course, even if they were both from habitat seed it is possible that some hybridisation might have happened, as both haageana and albilanata come from the area where Otero collected these plants.

Hmmm.......

Hi all,

M. discolor FO-108 comes from the Sierra Mixteca region which is well south of the 'normal' discolor region. It is usually labelled as M. discolor ochoterenae, and the folllowing field numbers refer to the same taxon: ML 205, FO-180, MG 623.7, Wolf 18, Rog 63B, TL 219 (info from the Lacoste field list).
Attached is a field photo from M. ochoterenae WTH 997 from the Sierra Mixteca (not the same location as ML 205). Flower colour was uniform here, whitish with sometimes a bit yellow in it (I have no good quality photos of the few flowering plants, however). Plants in the shade of bushes had a less dense and shorter spination than the plant shown in the photo.
I do have a little doubt about the identity of your plants, they seem to deviate a bit from the normal discolor form. Also, the flower shape of your first photos does seem to deviate from the discolor flower. Are you sure that they are not of hybrid origin?
M. wiesingeri, which is related to M. discolor, has red fruits. Therefore, I would not draw any hard conclusions from fruit colour.
Also attached are 4 photos of M. discolor WTH 946 and M. magnimamma WTH 947 from the Laguna de Totolcingo. Flower colour of discolor at this site varied from white to pink (although pink flowers were the exception). The third photo shows M. discolor and red flowering M. magnimamma which grows at the same site. The last photo shows the red flowering M. magnimamma.

Wolter ten Hoeve.      

M. discolor ochoterenae WTH 997


M. discolor WTH 946


M. discolor WTH 946


M. discolor WTH 946 + M. magnimamma WTH 947


M. magnimamma WTH 947