Mamm. glassii flower

At about 1 cm across, could this be the smallest flower in Cactaceae? Pinhead diameter is 2 mm.
Cheers,

Francesc M.

M. anniana, M. eriacantha and M. columbiana have flowers which are smaller than those of M. glassii.

Wolter ten Hoeve.

Thank you Wolter. I don't have any of these three species, will start looking for them!
Francesc M.

Hello!
If this topic is already touched, I will show my M. glassii and M. ascensionis nominis-dulcis.
Small flower against a large flower.
The center with the hook against the center is straight.
But I met her with a large flower and hooks. Pot 9 cm.







PVV1962

I remember when I first had a plant of M. ascensionis, which I still regard as a subspecies of M. glassii, I remarked on the size of the flowers compared to "normal" M. glassii.

If it weren't for the fact that they come from very similar areas, similar habitats, I'd be thinking that they should be separate species, as indeed seems to be the case in Germany for example. But because of those similarities, I'm happy with just a subspecies, but in my book a much prettier one. Spine variation occurs in so many species, this isn't significant in naming, imho.

Hello.
The German school reanimates the old species. It suits me.
I received seeds called ascencionis nominis-dulcis.
When buying seeds or seedlings, there is always a share of the risk.
You calmed me down. Thank you. And hooks on dulcis may still appear.
Vladimir.

Mine bears collection number L1537; it is similar to Vladimir's first plant but with deeper pink flowers.
Greetings,

Francesc M.

My M. glassii L1537 look a lot better in fruit than in flower.

Doing a good impression of M. prolifera with that many seed pods!

In my opinion, there are 4 different forms of M. glassii.
1. M. glassii itself, with small bodies and flowers, growing over a large area in the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico. Several locations are known, and I found it at 4 locations.
2. M. glassii ascensionis, growing on the Cerro Hijo near La Ascension. Its spination is somewhat different from that of M. glassii, and the flowers are somewhat larger, but not much.
3. M. glassii siberiensis, growing near La Encantada and Siberia, with small flowers, but much larger bodies than M. glassii.
4. M. glassii nominis-dulcis, growing on the Cerro Viejo near Zaragoza. The namegiver, Dulces Nombres, is still quite far away from this type location. This one has by far the largest flowers, and the pinkiest. It deviates the most from the standard M. glassii.
I have observed 2,3, and 4 at their natural locations.

Wolter ten Hoeve, The Netherlands.

Hello.
So we went to Mexico. Thank you all for your correspondence journey. We can say that I have some hothouse hybrids (lines). In this case, the priority is for L1537. Although the plant JFabiao  seems more fluffy. Probably the sun of Portugal.
PVV.

http://www.cl-cactus.com

Field number : L 1537
Collector : Alfred Bernhard Lau
Species : Mammillaria glassii f.  
Locality : Mexicó : Tamaulipas (track from Dulces Nombres over Santa Engracia 1800m)
Date : 15/07/1985.

There is also a photo corresponding to No. 4 Wolter ten Hoeve.
With dark central spines with a hook and "huge" pink flowers.

PVV.

In the field list of Alfred Lau the following is written about Lau 1537: A form with very small flowers. It is the easternmost of all populations of this species.
In the Michel Lacoste field list you will find ML 461 which is probably the same as Lau 1537, because Michel Lacoste also found it along the road from Santa Engracia to Dulces Nombres. Michel also writes that the flowers are very small.

Lau 1186 and ML 430 are from Cerro Viejo, they are the real glassii nominis-dulcis with the larger pinkish flowers.

Attached are photos of M. glassii ascensionis and of M. glassii nominis-dulcis.
The first photo is of glassii ascensionis, the second and third are of glassii nominis-dulcis. Glassii nominis-dulcis mostly grows on almost vertical cliffs, very high up the Cerro Viejo. I was unable to reach the plants on those steep cliffs (my companions did, however), because of the difficulty of the terrain. But I found a clump on the ground, in a 'nest' of pine needles, and another clump in the shade under a rock, where it did not really get much light. My old seed-grown nominis-dulcis plants do have hooked central spines.

Wolter ten Hoeve.  

A few more photos of the species in habitat at the ML457 location, La Manzana, NL.

1. My mistake in writing M. ascensionis nominis-dulcis.
This is nonsense.
2. I need to buy a map of Mexico and seeds with field numbers. .
3. The photo on the site cl-cactus.com L 1537 does not correspond to reality?
Thank you for the photo.

1. M. ascensionis var. nominis-dulcis is a name published by Werner Reppenhagen. The name is completely valid, so you didn't make a mistake at all. But it is just another name for M. glassii nominis-dulcis. Pilbeam, in his Mammillaria book, has lumped too many taxa under M. glassii subsp. ascensionis, in my opinion. Pilbeam (Hunt?) has put siberiensis, ascensionis and nominis-dulcis all under subsp. ascensionis. I would prefer subspecies status for each of them, and perhaps a separate species status for nominis-dulcis, because it deviates considerably from the others.
2. Seeds with field numbers are a good way to grow plants, but you can never be sure that it is still pure material. Only when all seedling plants look similar, and when they correspond to the original plant, then you can be quite certain that you have the correct taxon.
An example: Long ago, I had collected seeds of M. duwei in Mexico, then grew plants from it, pollinated the flowers, and distributed seeds with my field number attached. However, the plants from that seed were not the real duwei anymore. Apparently, cross-pollination had occurred with other crinita-like plants in my greenhouse, due to flying insects.
3. The photo of L1537 on cl-cactus.com must be wrong indeed. On mammillarias.net you will find more photos under M. glassii. There are quite a few glassiis with ML numbers, e.g. ML 438, ascensionis; ML 461, identical or very close to L1537; ML 430, nominis-dulcis.

Wolter.

Addition: On the Mammillaria forum you can also find photos of glassiis and its subspecies at Maurillio's pages. I am afraid, however, that the photos of M. glassii Lau 1339 (from Jame) do not correspond with what Lau described: small, purplish flowers. Also, the photos of glassii siberiensis Lau 1322 don't correspond to the real siberiensis, which has small flowers, as in the other siberiensis photos.

Wolter.

This is a picture of one of my M. glassii L1537 seedlings (seed from SuccSeed, 2008). The flowers only fully open in hot sunny weather and may seem large until you realize the plant is in a 5cm pot.

I bought seed of M. glassii L1537 “Dulces Nombres Tamaulipas” from Mesa garden, expecting to get the large flowered version subsp. nomnis-dulcis, seemingly I was misled by incorrectly labelled pictures on the internet. The first small sedling flowered today and is a smaller very light pinkish white flower as described above as the true L1537. Ah well, nice looking plants but back to the drawing board to find the large flowered version.

The Lau 1537 (ML 461) grows at 1500 - 1800 meters along the road between Santa Engracia and Dulces Nombres, somewhere east of Dulces Nombres, but still a long way from that old mining village. I don't think that there are any mining activities anymore. As far as I know, the road towards the village is very difficult to drive, if at all. Michel Lacoste states thay you find them everywhere along the road in large quantities.

M. glassii nominis-dulcis grows at the Cerro Viejo near Ascension, above 2300 meters, and west of Dulces Nombres. That road is also difficult to drive. From that location to Dulces Nombres is about 15 km, as the crow flies. In reality, it will probably be closer to 50 km, if not more. Roads will be of very poor quality.

I don't know of anyone who ever went from Santa Engracia via Dulces Nombres to Zaragoza by car, but on the internet you can find the account of a motorcyclist who made that trip. It was a rather horrible experience! See https://miltonotto.typepad.com/archives/2001/ (his trip starts at Santa Engracia, about halfway the page)

I does not seem very logical to call the large-flowered form M. glassii nominis-dulcis, but that's how the original description was made.

Wolter ten Hoeve.

Thankyou for the information Wolter, that is very interesting.

Curious. Nominis-dulcis is latin for "Dulces Nombres", but the plants apparently grow closer to Ascension, from which the name ascensionis is likely derived. The authors of the original descriptions did not make it easy for us.

Comparing my GPS data of glassii ascensionis, nominis-dulcis, siberiensis with the GPS-location of Dulces Nombres and the GPS of ML 462 (the glassii with the tiny flowers on the way to Dulces Nombres), I get the following distances, all as the crow flies:
Dulces Nombres is 20 km to the east of M. glassii nominis-dulcis.
ML 462 is 30 km to the east of M. glassii nominis-dulcis.
M. glassii siberiensis is 6 km to the southwest of M. glassii nominis-dulcis.
M. glassii ascensionis is 50 km to the northwest of M. glassii nominis-dulcis.

Zaragoza is only 6 km to the west of M. glassii nominis-dulcis (yet, Zaragoza is more than 1000 m lower in elevation!), i.e. M. glassii zaragozensis would have been a more appropriate name than M. glassii nominis-dulcis.

All my other glassii locations are much further north. But I have no doubt that there will be glassiis at many more locations in this very difficultly accessible region.

Wolter.