Is this Lau 1128?

This was one of Bill Maddam's plants, which I have cleaned up and repotted. The label says M. supertexta L1128, though when I look at the Lau field number list and his notes, he says that it is M. lanigera, which he believes is a form of M. supertexta. and he goes on to say that when Reppenhagen described the plants in 1987 he compared it to M. huitzilopochtlii.

Now M. ignota is, I believe, now accepted to be a form of M. albilanata ssp. oaxacana, and this plant is nothing like my other "ignota" forms. It also doesn't look "white" enough to be a true M. supertexta, and though you can just see that there are very, very short central spines, maybe 3 or 4, they are darker but hardly black, more honey brown.

To me it looks more like a large stemmed form of either M. crucigera ssp. grandinosa or one of the forms of M. huitzilopchtlii, though I doubt this one really.

Of course, it is entirely possible that the plant was wrongly labelled!

I would welcome advice please.

The plant in a 25cm bowl:



Closer up of a flowering head:



Crop from the previous of the spines and flower:

To make things more confused: In its 2003 seed list Mesa Garden had listed under MG 705.8 M. ignota Lau 1128. My MG 705.8 seed-grown plants do indeed look like M. ignota. They have 4 subcentral spines tipped red-brown and around 20 or more white radials.
I have attached a photo of such a mammillaria which grows between Yolox and Quiotepec (i.e. the area cited by Lau), and which conforms quite well to my MG 705.8 plants. I have labelled it as M. lanigera WTH 1010, it grows at 2020 m. Sorry, the photo is not of good quality.
On the road from Quiotepec to the Rio Grande, which is the road to Maninaltepec, we found another mammillaria which looked more like supertexta, see the second photo. But it certainly has features of M. ignota. I have it labelled as M. lanigera WTH 1009. It grows at 1470 m.    

Wolter.

The plot certainly thickens!

The thing I can't quite reconcile with ignota as a name for my plant is the spine col our, which I would call pale straw, and the incredibly short central spines, hardly 2mm I'd estimate.

I have other plants called ignota, ML37, ML270. P324 and also Lau1128, which all have white spines and a very definite white central. They are young plants, but are really not like the plant I posted. I can't see he seedlings of L1128 growing to look anything like this apparent supertexta L1128.

From the locations given, we seem to have two clusters - one around Yolox-Quiotepec (San Juan Quiotepec), and another to the west around Tomellin Canyon. But are they really the same plant? There's quite a lot of mountains between the two places. And there is another Quiotepec, Santiago Quiotepec near San Juan de los Cues, somewhat further to the north. That is a bt closer to supertexta country isn't it?

I have to suspect a wrong label, but if so then what is it?

OK, some more research!

Lau found his 1128 at Yolox-Quiotepec. He said he regarded it to be a form of M. supertexta. He showed the plants to Reppenhagen, who described the plants in 1987 in his Die Gattung Mammillaria nach dem heutigen Stand meines Wissens. He named them M. lanigera, and the description in this book, and the only photo looks a lot closer to my plant that any form of M. albilanata oaxacana, such as ignota. Reppenhagen goes on to say that he believes it to be a member of the Crucigera group, and is close to M. huitzilopchtlii.

There are a load of photos of M. lanigera in the A to Z section, but they are all somewhat different from each other, and only the Rep 944 looks at all close. I have a ML265 which is from the same location as Rep 944, San Miguel Maninaltepec. Its dark now, so its too late to go and look, but I'll do so on Friday.

Meanwhile...more speculations???

Could it be that there has been a mix up somewhere in the plant's history. Lau's next field number L1129 is a form of Mammillaria albilanata! Could it be that the longer white central-spined plants in cultivation never should have been called L1128 but should be L1129? If the mistake was made early on, and between 1977 and 1987 then maybe it then gets to Mesa Garden wrongly numbered, and then on to many of the European nurseries, and so on.

Too far fetched?

I do not have the older Reppenhagen book, but the photo of M. lanigera in his later 2-volume book looks very much like M. ignota in my opinion.

I looked up what Thomas Linzen has written about M. lanigera in the loose-leaf collection of the German Mammillaria Society. Things seem to get more complicated! Here follows a summary:
"There are irregularities between the plants distributed by Reppenhagen under Rep 944 and the plants from the type locality. Rep 944 is identical to Lau 1126. These plants are characterized by a very short, strong spination. The plants from the type locality have a uniform longer spination and are easily distinguishable. Reppenhagen gives a central spine length of 2-5 mm, and radial 1.5-3 mm, which corresponds to the known plants of Rep 944 and Lau 1126.
Reppenhagen gives 1900 m as altitude for the type locality, whereas Lau 1126 is reported at 700 m. In 1996, Wolf and Linzen found plants at 2050 and 1050 m (700 m is not possible in this region), which are indeed different in spination. Lau 1126 and Rep 944 only grow at 1050 m in a rather harsh environment, comparable with M. crucigera. That explains why Lau compares his Lau 1226 with M. crucigera and Reppenhagen his Rep 944 with M. huitzilopochtli. But the only link is the comparable environment.
Reppenhagen cannot have visited this location, for then his description of the location would have been totally different. He can only have been at no lower than 1900 m and he will only have registered the higher altitude plants. He has propagated the Lau 1126 as Rep 944 and has used that in his description. This is the only way to explain the discrepancies.
Irrespective of this, M. lanigera can only be considered as a form of M. ignota, it is synonymous to M. ignota. With Lau 1128 and Lau 1126 (Rep 944) we have the two extremes as far as spination is concerned. L1128 has the longest, L1126 the shortest spination in this group."

Wolter ten Hoeve.

Thanks, Wolter. However it doesn't help a lot in identifying my actual plant.
If L1128 has the longest central spines, then I don't understand Lau's comments. Without any more detail from Lau on the plants he found, I shall have to consider his statement that whatever the name he used, he thought it close to supertexta, and label it so.
I have an email from W. Plein on this subject, but I'm away from home and I don't seem to be able to download the email on my tablet, probably too big.