Mammillaria melaleuca

Mammillaria melaleuca
From J.Pilbeam "Mammillaria" pag.187:
Radial spines, 8 or 9 slender, almost stright, the upper the longer, divided into two distinct colours, hence the specific name (melaleuca means black and white), the lower 5 spines being white, the others above purplish brown.
From seeds coming from Czech Republic this strange Mammillaria melaleuca.
Did anybody seen a plant whit this strange radial spines yet?

My Mammillaria melaleuca "normal".........

Hi Maurillo,

I have observed something similar. I had 1 melaleuca which fitted the Pilbeam description very well, upper and central spines dark, lower radial spines white. When this plant almost rotted away (I could save two small offsets, which are mature now), I sowed the seeds of a fruit which was present. From these seeds I succeeded in growing 1 plant which looks quite a lot like your abnormal melaleuca, more radials than normal melaleuca and all radials are white. To me it also feels like the tubercles are softer than for the normal melaleuca. I think that my abnormal melaleuca is a hybrid, possibly with M. sphaerica or another dolichothele.
Attached are two habitat photos of M. melaleuca, growing in forest. Photos are not of very good quality, because of the poor light in the forest.

Wolter ten Hoeve.

I thought a "forma intermedia" baumii/melaleuca.
The two are from Tamaulipas (and sphaerica).

Here is a photo of my normal melaleuca (right) and of the abnormal melaleuca (left), grown from seed collected from the normal melaleuca. It must therefore be a hybrid and (as more or less suggested by Maurillo) it could be that the other parent has been M. baumii instead of M. sphaerica.
Note the similarity between Maurillo's abnormal melaleuca and my abnormal melaleuca.

Wolter ten Hoeve.

Certainly something odd about those "variants". I suppose that since M. melaleuca and M. baumii are in the Dlocothele subgenus then they are pretty close. The fact that they are also close geographically is interesting.

But don't say too much or some English botanist will lump them together.  

And for further comparison, here are a couple of photos of the M. melaleuca that I saw last year.

First one in bud, north of Palmillas:



and again, a multi-headed one at the same location:



We also found it sw of Jaumave, but for some reason it seems that I didn't take its photo!