Mammillaria wrightii ssp wilcoxii Lau 1079

or meridiorosea....or ????

When I was in Chihuahua in 2010, I found plants near the Mex-16, east of Yepachi at approx 1928 m, and that I called M. wilcoxii, and they were in flower.



You will note that the flower colour is very different to that described for M. wilcoxii, even those found over the border near Yecora, those being a lovely violet colour.

Lau's collection number 1079 is stated to come from near Yepachi, at 2300m and I have one specimen, but as yet it has not flowered for me. From looking at Yepachic on Google Earth, I cannot find a location near Yepachic at 2300m, which is what he gave for this collection. Most of the higher land around barely gets to 2000m, so that is a bit odd.

Since I was there, I have worried about this plant, and have started to wonder whether, in fact, they were not M. wilcoxii but in fact B. garessii, which is a form of M. barbata. The plant shown above has, on some areoles, two central spines, whereas M. wilcoxii is described as having a single central spine, and indeed, the plants I saw with purple flowers near Yecora did have only a single central spine. The flower colour of my "Yepachic" plants would be more in keeping with garessii. However, I know from experience that plants in habitat can be somewhat variable in spine characters.

Lau collected his Lau 1078 further north of Yepachic, and called these plants M. garessii.

So, if anyone has a photo of either Lau 1078 or Lau 1079 in flower, I'd like to see which, if either, has the "normal" wilcoxii flower, or the reddish-brown flower of the plants that I found. This would add to the information that I have and allow me to make a better informed decision on what species I did actually find.

In the Mesa Garden seed list of 1999, Lau 1079 is listed under M. barbata (MG 562.9, barbata L1079, Yepachic, Chih, small soft stem, hooked red spines). My MG 562.9 plants have relatively small (as compared to wilcoxii or meridiorosei), pale pink/brown flowers, if I remember well. The flowers of your habitat plants seem darker than those of my plants.
I also have L1079 plants in my collection which were sown from Succulenta seed (seed list 1993). These seeds originated from the DeHerdt nurseries. Here the description says 'soft pink to purple flowers'. The flowers on my plants are purple pink and clearly larger (and prettier) than those of the MG 562.9 plants. They look more like the flowers of M. wilcoxii plants from Yecora.
When I look at the flowers of my plants, I would say that the plants are 2 different species. I have always wondered which of my L1079 plants are correctly labelled.

Wolter ten Hoeve.

Thanks Wolter, it is interesting that Brack changed the name of the Lau collection. I hadn't come across that before.

I think I must conclude that the Yepachic plants have to be M. barbata, and those from Yecora are M. wilcoxii.

It's only taken me a couple of years to realise this!

Lau 1079 - Sown in 2000, seeds from Dr Zanovello (Il sole rarità botaniche - Italia)