Mammillaria parkinsonii?

I bought this plant from a commercial grower here in Portugal as a small seedling. I figured it was M. parkinsonii based on its spination (I loved it!) and general look, but now it has flowered I wonder if it's not an hybrid. Is it normal for the species to have those pale pink to salmon coloured flowers? (that's a 7cm pot)

Hi jfabiao,

Nice plant. M. parkinsonii flowers are described as pale yellowish, with a thin reddish brown midstripe. If you are privileged to have a copy of John Pilbeam's Mammillaria book and turn to p.213, there are two photos,the top one showing a plant with the pale yellowish flowers and the bottom one with a more pronounced reddish brown stripe SB315. If the grower was to sow many hundreds of seeds, at any one time, it would not surprise me to see some variation in flower colour or spines etc. Was this commercial grower mainly a cactus grower? Maybe they might have an original field collection number to investigate further or a least confirm to you if  m. parkinsonii is what they believe it to be. I'm happy to call it m. parkinsonii.
An outside contender could be m.cadereytensis, which has a similar appearance to m. parkinsonii in growth, with slightly shorter spines and considered by some to be beneath m. parkinsonii, and generally comes with more deeply pink striped flowers in cultivation. Hope this helps. Derek.

Thank you, Derek. It is a cactus grower, but one that does it the dutch way - thousands of plants for flower shops or supermarkets. If the seed ever had a collection number, he couldn't care less about it. I like to visit his greenhouses and sometimes indulge in roaming the "fields" of cacti in search of good looking plants, and the day I bought this one I bought another two or three M. parkinsonii wannabes. Those who have flowered have come true to type and I was waiting for this one, for its spines are something else. I have a plant of M. cadereytensis, but its flower colour is a lot different. In fact, the colour of these flowers is way off of anything I've seen in these Mammillaria but it may be, as you say, a case of natural variability. I'm keeping the label as it is and wait to see if it will divide dichotomously. Thanks!

Nice spines!

I wouldn't change the label either. It reminds me of a plant of M. parkinsonii (without any field data) that I acquired in 1988. It did split and made 2 heads and then stopped. repotting, feeding etc. has made no real change in it, but t has never flowered so I can't add anything to compare your flower colour. In all other ways it is typical of M. parkinsonii.