This cool plant is an Echinopsis shaferi / Trichocereus shaferi that I got through eBay, maybe 10-15 years ago. The plant was supposed to flower white, but ended up having an incredibly beautiful yellow flower that had a diameter of over 20 cm AND WAS RUFFLED. Perfect flower right there. The plant is incredibly fertile and pollinates most of the flowers I put it on.
I am also aware that the Hofer family has spread some Trichocereus shaferi hybrids in the past, and I am not sure if it is one of theirs. It was supposed to be a white flowering botanical Shaferi. But who knows. This species is also VERY close to Trichocereus vollianus.
So this classic hybrid called ORANGE CALIFORNIA belongs to a group of hybrids often referred to as California hybrids. The breeder is Hans Britsch and the parents are Soehrensia x Trichocereus schickendantzii. ORANGE CALIFORNIA is a sister of the even more famous hybrid FLYING SAUCER, which is very similar, but has even better flowers. So far I’ve only seen flowers on ORANGE CALIFORNIA once or twice, so it’s always a great sight to see the flowers. One of the pollinations succeeded too!
So this one is an oldschool classic hybrid by Anton Maas called SUPER APRICOT. Known and famous for the ragged flowers and the glowing nice flower color. It´s from a cross between an Echinopsis hybrid called APRICOT and Gräsers SUPER GELB Genetically, a total mess, but with the right parents it can still produce some decent offspring. Very often, the offspring doesn´t carry the ragged flower mutation, but sometimes it does.
So this one is really a spectacular hybrid between Wörlitz x Yellow California by Ingo Barthels. One of the best plants I ever bought on eBay. I had some seeds of this one with another amazing parent in my shop and it probably was the most slept on cross I had in a while. I think the offspring from this plant will be quality stuff, especially if paired with a good father. And yeah, this is me after buying OTTO LEHMANN on eBay, grafted on an Eriocereus / Harrisia. This video was taken in 2020 and since then the whole plant doubled in size and almost looks like a thick little melon now. Really cool.
Hildewintera / Akersia Hybrid OTTO SCHULTZ is a popular intergeneric hybrid that produces beautiful little flowers that look a bit similar to Cleistocactus flowers. They are roughly 9 cm in diameter and have a nice purple color. I personally love this hybrid and made various crosses with it. In regards to the potential I am not sure how it´ll do when paired with other parents, but I see a lot of potential for crosses with Trichocereus. The parents of Otto Schultz are (Hildewintera aureispina x Akersia roseiflora) x Echinopsis eyriesii v. grandiflora.
The Trichocereus hybrid SAARLAND is a hybrid created by Rolf Autenrieth. It is a sister plant of the SAARTAL and SAARWELLEN.
Breeder: Rolf Autenrieth
Cross: Echinopsis pachanoi x Echinopsis obrepanda v. calorubra (also known as Pseudolobivia calorubra).
It is a beautiful hybrid with a pink to purple colored flower. The flower is not as wavy as the flower of the SAARWWELLEN, but it´s definitely a fine hybrid that shows traits of both parents. The spines rather follow the Echinopsis obrepanda, while the body shows some clear columnar tendencies.
Check out our main plant database pages for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
I wanted to clarify some things about the PC Trichocereus clone and the differences to classic Trichocereus pachanoi. What it is, where it probably is from and what it isnt. The name is one of the most overused names in the history of Trichocereus culture. I personally hate it and spent days discussing the whole situation with friends or interested people in the Trichocereus Facebook group. If you hear the word PC in a Trichocereus group, JUST RUN. Log off, go outside and be in your garden. Still, if you actually wonder what those guys are actually talking about, I am happy to shed some light on this issue. Please keep in mind that I hate to use the name of this cultivar, strain or whatever you might want to call it and I will only mention this one time and one time only.
What does PC Trichocereus stands for? It originally means PREDOMINATE CULTIVAR. However, PREDOMINANT CULTIVAR would probably be more appropriate.
Photo: moonunitbotanica.com / PC Trichocereus in Australia
PC Trichocereus in a garden. Photo: Forest & Kim Starr
Now what is it really and is this all BS?
No one knows for sure and DNA testing needs to be done. That´s pretty much my main argument and people love to misinterpret this article. PC Trichocereus pachanoi (sic) is a clone, but there also are other plants grown from seeds that are probably coming from the same site this clone is coming from too. In California and parts of the USA, this clone is really common around parks, schools or gardens. The exact origin of PC Pachanoi (like many call it) is unclear. However, it is very similar to a collection made by Friedrich Ritter, which he later described as Trichocereus riomizquensis. Since there are so few photos available this will be hard to verify. In my opinion the PC Trichocereus clone needs DNA testing and everything else is speculation. Personally, I don´t give a shit. This is not my clone, and I did not have any connection with the naming of it. The person who somewhat described it was Michael S. Smith on the SAB forum. His opinion about PC was that it was VERY similar to Ritter´s population from Rio Mizque and the seed grown plants from NMCR. The photos of those can be find on SAB, so make sure to check them out. If he still thinks that I do not know.
Two things are certain about PC Trichocereus. One, it is VERY similar to spineless or short spine versions of Trichocereus bridgesii. Two, it is so different from actual Trichocereus pachanoi that every Noob can easily identify it after a few months of reading. There must be a reason for the fact that it is so different to classic Trichocereus pachanoi. Whether it is a hybrid or a short spined form of Trichocereus bridgesii is impossible to verify without DNA testing. And one thing should be clear by now; I the author don´t care enough to investigate. Anyone that wants to jump face forward into the subject and fund a DNA test be my guest. More power to you my friend. Just know that the discussion around this clone will always be on Kindergarten level, no matter what the outcome is. It is the Trichocereus version of “but her emails”. Facts or actual knowledge do not matter and too many people who have no experience with the lesser known Trichocereus species love to shout their opinion at anyone that doesn’t agree.
Now that we got that out of the way, here are some more infos and a more thorough description of PC and similar plants.
Trichocereus riomizqzensis FR865
This is the original photo from Ritter´s book. Do you see the white hairs on the flower and the way the areoles look? Like, the sawtooth ribs and the absent spines? Well, keep in mind. You will need it later. Ritters official collection name of this plant was Trichocereus riomizquensis FR856 and they originally comes from Chyllas. Again, there is no way of knowing for sure, but PC and Ritter´s Trichocereus riomizquensis are very similar. Please don´t use Sacred Succulents pics for making the argument that they look different because there are also Trichocereus bridgesii growing at the whole area and it is very likely that at least some of the plants collected back then actually fall into Trichocereus bridgesii. Ritter´s plant was almost spineless and the newer Sacred Succulents plants are a lot spinier. This species simply needs DNA testing to establish a baseline and find out if Trichocereus riomizquensis isn´t actually just a form of Trichocereus bridgesii. Since there are many spineless versions of Trichocereus bridgesii, this might very well be the case.
The original site is the Rio Mizque and we and my friends from Sacred Succulents visited the original site a couple of times. It is extremely similar to Trichocereus pachanoi, but differs in substantial points like the hairs on the flowers and the overall rib structure. Though it is common belief that the San Pedro cactus aka Trichocereus pachanoi grows in Bolivia, all the San Pedro related plants we ever came across IN THE WILD either belonged to Trichocereus bridgesii or Trichocereus scopulicola. That also applies to the regional type from the Rio Mizque. I have all kinds of photos of those plants on the pages about Trichocereus riomizquensis and I don´t want to repeat this information here again. This is a long-spined version of this but there also are a lot of short-spined ones on that site. I seen them. Just like this PC Trichocereus, they have 6-7 ribs, those weird areoles and golden spines without swollen spine bases. Overall, they are just a short-spined version of Trichocereus bridgesii. In addition to the short spined versions, there are also MANY versions with longer spines at this site and they are basically indistinguishable from Trichocereus bridgesii. In my opinion they probably ARE Trichocereus bridgesii varieties. People often like to compare the Ritter clone FR865 (look at the photos again) to spiny Trichocereus bridgesii that Sacred Succulents collected and labeled Trichocereus bridgesii during their field trip. Again, some of those probably were treated as local populations of Trichocereus bridgesii, so it´s kinda unfair to make a comparison between the spineless plant that was originally described as Trichocereus riomizquensis to basically a random local population of Trichocereus bridgesii. All of these plants CLEARLY belong to Trichocereus bridgesii in the greater context (even the spineless collection), but Ritter´s plant was clearly not the same clone or type of plant as the spiny Bridgesoids that also grow in that area. That plant is clearly photographed in his original photo, and the fact that it looks nothing like some of the spiny collections from the area should instantly end all comparisons. There are spineless AND spiny versions of Trichocereus peruvianus, so it shouldn´t come as a surprise that it might be similar with Trichocereus riomizquensis.
Drought Resistance and Hardiness
Let me just say that one thing that all Bolivian Trichocereus species have in common is their drought resistance. They literally live in a hot desert and are a lot more resistant to drought than Trichocereus pachanoi or some of the other Peruvian San Pedros. And that’s where I want to draw the line directly to this Californian clone. Clones & cultivars are not humbug or bullshit….cultivars exist in EVERY field of commercial cultivation and everyone who tells you different is a fool. One such cultivar is the infamous PREDOMINANT CULTIVAR, which is extremely drought resistant and manages to thrive in the California climate too. This clone is so present in that area that it´s probably the most common Trichocereus. We tested it numerous times…almost none of those Californian plants were able to mate with each other…simply because they were genetically identical and cuttings of each other. I seen whole nurseries filled up with PC because they are so damn easy to grow. They just cut them in small pieces and stick them into the ground. And after five years, they sell it for 30-100 bucks. All those plants share the same flower characteristics and are closer to Trichocereus bridgesii than they are to Trichocereus pachanoi. They are covered with white hairs, which is absolutely typical for Trichocereus bridgesii. I know a Bolivian Trichocereus species when I see one…and this Trichocereus PC is one without a doubt.
The flowers of PC Trichocereus:
Do you see all those white hairs? Good, because it’s important to differentiate between certain Trichocereus species. Trichocereus pachanoi tends to have black or brown hairs, while this one has whitish hairs on top of a black or brown base. And that’s typical for some Bolivian San Pedro strains, e.g Trichocereus scopulicola.
One common argument that I often hear from people with an agenda is that the white hairs on PC Trichocereus and Trichocereus scopulicola are just white because they are stained by the sun. I find that argument insulting, simply because there are so many photos that prove that there is a visible tendency for whiter(!) hairs on some Bolivian species when the buds/flowers are originally formed. OF COURSE THE SUN BLEACHES THE HAIRS ON THE FLOWERS OF ALL TRICHOCEREUS SPECIES. The sun bleaches everything including the hairs of all living things if you expose them to it, but it should be pretty obvious that there are wild differences in hair coloration in the genus Trichocereus when they are originally formed. Later on, the hair color of all species is under constant attack by the strong sunlight and bleached until only the brown or black wool below remains. Most of these flowers have hairs and wool (usually around the scales on the flowers), and both are two different things. If you look at the photos it becomes clear that there´s brown wool coming out in between the scales (only a few mm long) of both PC and Trichocereus scopulicola, and the substantially longer whitish hairs (up to a couple cm long).
Ritter wrote in his book that Trichocereus riomizquensis is closer to Trichocereus scopulicola than it is to Trichocereus bridgesii. I think this speaks volumes, and it clears up why people often have a hard time differentiating bloated Trichocereus scopulicola and PC Trichocereus.
A flower bud of PC Trichocereus
A flower bud of Trichocereus scopulicola.
Those two photos of PC Trichocereus are from Misplant.net! Check out their seeds because they are amazing. Well, just compare the photos and see for yourself. The top photo is the flower bud of this PC Trichocereus and the lower one is a bud on a Trichocereus scopulicola. They are at different stages in their development, but I am sure you see the similarity in the important parts. And the same applies to the flower on Trichocereus bridgesii, which is another Bolivian Trichocereus.
Scop from Misplant.net
ID Chaos on Forums and Facebook Groups
Alright, now that we have this out of the way let me just say that discussions about PC are very common on message boards and Facebook groups. Like it is with most other things in life, people who do not have enough experience just love to identify stuff even though they should probably not. PC is among the most misidentified plants on Trichocereus groups. And this is not because it is so difficult to identify. Like I said, even a noob can identify it, IF he knows what to look for. Due to the fact that people use PC for many classic Trichocereus pachanoi, there is total chaos around what actually constitutes a PC Trichocereus or not. In pretty much every ID request involving Trichocereus pachanoi, there are people that will call it a PC. If something has spines, there´s a good chance someone will label it PC. If you know what to look for, this clone is one of the easiest ones to identify though.
Is the PREDOMINANT CULTIVAR A CLONE?
Yes, but there are also people that made crosses with it and grew offspring of it. The majority of the plants in the States is clone, but I know that there´s also a lot of offspring that´s making the rounds. Misplant alone made hundreds of crosses with this clone, and I´m sure he wasn´t the only one. All cuttings taken from the main PC clone are genetically identical.
What about sister plants / seedlings grown from the same fruit?
Regardless what it is, it is very likely that there were other plants from the same population or fruit. If it is actually Ritter´s plant from Rio Mizque in Bolivia, there are probably thousands of other seedlings grown from his seeds. It doesn´t change the fact that the majority of PCs around are one clone, but it just underlines that there might be more plants from the genetic proximity. I doubt you can differentiate the actual PC from its offspring or closely related sister plants. I´ve seen lots of seedgrown PC hybrids and they pretty much looked like the famous parent. It is a very dominant clone and in almost all crosses with it the classic PC traits came through.
Short Spined Trichocereus bridgesii from Bolivia
Here are some Bolivian T.bridgesii and Trichocereus riomizquensis with very short spines. They are still part of Trichocereus bridgesii in a wider sense, but you can see that there is a clear similarity to the PREDOMINATE CULTIVAR. Same rib structure with sawtooth ribs, correct hair color, almost no spines, same skin structure, same golden spines (unlike gray or brown on T.pachanoi) etc. Imagine them with long golden spines and you have a Trichocereus bridgesii,
Well, okay. I want to come to and end but it´s important to make a very good point. YES, there are many San Pedros that are extremely similar to this clone. Not all of them are the same and I am sure there´s a fair amount that has absolutely nothing to do with this one. But it is absolutely proven that there IS a common clone in the USA and it is easily distinguished from typical Trichocereus pachanoi. There must be a reason for it.
Nurseries wanna make money and will replicate everything they have a market for. And those Bolivian Trichos or similar plants (as in PC ) are tough like hell. You literally stick them in the ground and they grow. And that played a part in the fact that this Trichocereus strain became wildly common in some parts of the USA.
Alright, I want to sum this up. Everyone is a bit in the right here. The way this plant is discussed recently is out of control. And some people tend to forget that there is a huge number of plants that are really similar to this PC Trichocereus…and they are coming from the habitats. In Peru, there are similar plants and I just posted the examples that you can find in Bolivia as well. But that doesn´t mean that those plants were just invented by cookoo internet theoreticians. They were collected, sold and commercially cultivated. This plant does probably NOT come from Backeberg, which is another theory that was discussed heavily.
This is a nice Pic that shows the difference between Fed and Unfed PC Trichocereus
Flowers of Trichocereus PC
Photos of PC Trichocereus
Check out our main plant database page for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
The Trichocereus peruvianus clones Rosei 1 & Rosei 2 are among the most interesting Trichocereus cultivars out there. Both are very glaucous with a dark blue skin. They have yellow or dark brown spines that often have black tips. The old spine growth looks very gray and the areoles are covered with very fine, white wool.
Trichocereus ‘Rosei 2’ was part of the legendary Australian Fields collection. Both Trichocereus rosei clones were brought to Australia by Harry Blossfeld, who was one of the first importers of cacti. . Prier donated some pics of the original mother plant at Fields and I am extremely glad we have them on the site.
“Rosei2” is certainly not a real species name and belongs into the context of Trichocereus peruvianus / Echinopsis peruviana. It is very similar to the dark blue Trichocereus peruvianus plants coming from Matucana and it´s possible that it was originally collected there. Either as seeds or as a live cutting. The spine color can be very variable and this clone is known to produce massive spines, which can be seen on some of the photos.
The SS03 Trichocereus is a clone that was and still is distributed by Sacred Succulents in California. It is a Trichocereus knuthianus that is very similar to the other Knuthianus forms that are available sometimes. The plant has strong spines and very typical V-notches that make it easy to spot. Seed grown seedlings grown from SS03 seeds look very spiny and have thin & yellow spines.
This is Sacred Succulents description from their catalogue. You can get this plant through their website at sacredsucculents.com:
Upright columns to 16′ or more. Dark green stems up to 6″ in diameter. Areoles bear 7 – 9 radial spines up to 1″ and one stout central spine up to 2″ long. White nocturnal flowers. Appears to be a form of Trichocereus peruvianus. Cold hardy to at least 25° Fahrenheit.
The Saquarema strain is a very rare Trichocereus pachanoi strain that was discovered in Brazil by a German botanist. The plant is named after the city where it was found. SAQUAREMA is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. It is extremely rare that you find a Trichocereus in Brazil and I am still astonished because this is definitely the first time I heard about a WILD San Pedro in Brazil. Today, Trichocereus pachanoi can be found in all South American countries but those plants are usually planted out as crops, natural fences or just ornamental plants. Without knowing the situation on the locality, I personally think that it MIGHT have gotten there long time ago with someone who planted it out (maybe with someone who brought it there from Peru) and that this plant has escaped into nature and grew into a the gigantic plant that it is now. But that´s just speculation and without investigating this first hand, it is impossible to know how this rare plant actually ended up there. The botanist who found it is very skilled and trustworthy, so I have reason to believe that this plant was really a wild Pachanoi.
We still learn new things about the San Pedro group, which is also underlined by the fact that Torres & Torres found Tr. pachanoi in the Atacama desert in Chile. Besides, the species name Trichocereus macrogonus has a wild history with people (Schumann) suspecting that Tr. macrogonus might have actually been originally from Brazil. I don´t think the latter is the case because we know Trichocereus peruvianus (and Tr. macrogonus) from Peru and because there is reason to believe that Schumann confused Tr. macrogonus with a Pilosocereus, but it also shows that Brazil still has gray patches that at least deserve further investigation. Nothing is impossible and I would love to hear more about the status of Trichocereus sp. in this area. Brazil is a wonderful place that still comes up with new cacti every now and then and this would not strike me by surprise. So yeah, I am puzzled by the find of this plant in Brazil, but there are many possibilities and maybe some of our Brazilian friends check the area out sometime soon.
Photos of Trichocereus pachanoi Saquarema
Saquarema is located at the Costa del Sol and is a wonderful place with a wonderful flora and fauna. Unlike popular belief, the Saquarema clone is NOT a Pilosocereus. It falls totally in line with other collections of Trichocereus pachanoi and reminds me of the plants that we know from Chile. It has a bright green epidermis and short stump spines and is partially variegated what makes thing plant even more collectible. The original mother plant was 2 – 3 meters tall and had three strong branches that all were completely yellow. The botanist managed to find some seeds at the bottom of the mother plant and raised a few seedlings which are now just called SAQUAREMA. One of those seedlings was partially variegated, which is known as the SAQUAREMA Variegate clone. There also are non-variegated plants, but due to the rare nature of this clone they are literally unavailable most of the times. In very rare cases, the variegated clone is offered in some of the Trichocereus Facebook Groups…but those usually sell pretty fast.
Check out our main plant database pages for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
Super Pedro is a very interesting Trichocereus scopulicola cultivar or hybrid involving it! It is closely related to the cultivar Trichocereus cordobensis.
SUPER PEDRO is a very popular clone within the Trichocereus community. I (and many others) originally thought this plant to be some kind of hybrid between Trichocereus pachanoi and Trichocereus scopulicola, but the exact parentage is unknown. It is a hybrid that was grown from a whole lot of unlabeled seeds by Jim Hall from Cactuscountry.com. The whole body and the flower traits point towards it being a form or hybrid involving Trichocereus scopulicola. There are definitely many differences between it and the standard Scop FR991, but you can clearly see the relationship to this species. Friedrich Ritter also collected and sold populations from Tarija that he described as Trichocereus crassicostatus. NMCR also collected a whole lot of seeds that produced versions of Trichocereus scopulicola that clearly differed from Ritter´s main collection. There are very few collections of Trichocereus scopulicola, so it´s either one of those or a hybrid with another parent.
SUPER PEDRO = Trichocereus cordobensis?
No, probably not. Trichocereus cordobensis is a bit closer to classic Trichocereus scopulicola and I think that they might be connected to the seeds from NMCR too. SUPER PEDRO on the other hand comes from the Australian cactus garden CACTUS COUNTRY.
One of those NMCR Scops can be seen here. The photo was made my M. S. Smith, who has a pretty amazing Flicker account with nothing but cool Tricho pics.
Super Pedro
Trichocereus cordobensis NMCR
Buy Seed or Plants: Super Pedro is popular but not available all the time. Your best bet to get some is to contact some breeders like Rodni Chisar, Misplant or Cactilicious.
There are all kinds of Trichocereus hybrids out there and I am happy to show you a couple of the resulting crosses on this page. I will try to update this page as often as I can, to show you what others grew from a certain cross.
Now let me add a little bit of background info to give you an understanding how this breeding works in case you are completely new to this. Almost all Trichocereus species are self-sterile. That means that you need pollen from another plant to produce seed. The pollen donor needs to be genetically different from the receiver. Because of that, it´s not possible to cross two different cuttings from the same mother plant. If you list the parents of a cross, it looks something like this: Trichocereus peruvianus x Trichocereus bridgesii That simply means that the Peruvianus is the mother plant, while Trichocereus bridgesii is the Father. In most cases, the resulting offspring comes closer to the mother than to the father. However, there are a lot of exceptions to this and sometimes, the genes of the father are simply more dominant. You can cross a whole lot of Trichos with each other and most of the crosses will work, if you did it right. But there are some crosses that just genetically don´t match. For example, the seedlings produced by that cross end up being variegated/albinos or simply die. That´s actually very common and can happen all the time. It happens the most when crossing plants like Hildewintera hybrids. And that´s probably because there werent many plants in the gene pool to begin with.
Most Trichocereus species have a white flower and apart from the extremely rare Trichocereus tulhuayacensis, all San Pedros are flowering white. Because of that, this community is trying to breed some San Pedros with colored flowers. There already are a handful of hybrids involving Echinopsis pachanoi with colored flowers. One such Trichocereus hybrid is called SAARWELLEN and the other one is AMUN-RE. But both Trichocereus hybrids are extremely rare.
Now, have a look at some of the photos of Trichocereus hybrids
Trichocereus validus Hybrid
Trichocereus terscheckii x Trichocereus bridgesii ‘Psycho0’
Echinopsis terscheckii x Echinopsis pachanoi
Trichocereus bridgesii ‘SS02’ x ‘Tom Juul´s Giant’
SS02 x Trichocereus bridgesii
Echinopsis peruviana ‘Sausage Plant’ x Trichocereus scopulicola
Echinopsis peruviana ‘ROSEI 1’ x OPEN
Pachanoi x SS02
Echinopsis pachanoi x J3
Echinopsis scopulicola ‘Super Pedro’ x J3
Trichocereus scopulicola ‘Super Pedro’ x Trichocereus bridgesii ‘HB02’
Fields x Rosei #1
Trichocereus bridgesii ‘SS02’ x Sierra Canyon
Trichocereus bridgesii SS02 x Trichocereus chiloensis
Psycho0 x Scopulicola
Luther Burbank x SS02
Sierra Blue x SS02
Echinopsis macrogona x Echinopsis scopulicola
Psycho0 x J2
Psycho0 x Open ‘Vishnu’
Check out our main plant database pages for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
Trichocereus santiaguensis is a regional variety of Trichocereus spachianus. And this clone has been floating around for at least 20 years. It sometimes is labeled Trichocereus pachanoi or Trichocereus bridgesii. And though the spination very rarely comes through, it makes it obvious that this is absolutely not a plant from the San Pedro group. The epidermis has a bright green color, which is typical for Trichocereus spachianus as well. If you are interested in seeds of Trichocereus spachianus, you can get some high quality seeds here:
The Trichocereus santiaguensis monstrosa is a nursery produced cultivar that sometimes shows up on websites like eBay.
The Tr. santiaguensis monstrose is probably a nursery produced mutant that was grown from Ritter´s Trichocereus santiaguensis seed. It is also called green pepperoni cactus, cereus pepperone, and so on. There only were very few collections of this plant and it would be surprising to hear if it is unrelated to the stuff that was collected by Friedrich Ritter. All the seeds I bought were dead as wood.
Now let´s summarize what this plant is synonymous with:
Trichocereus spachianus monstrosa
Trichocereus santiaguensis monstrosa
Cereus santiaguensis monstrosa
Cereus spachianus monstrosa
Trichocereus santiaguensis monstrosa
Echinopsis santiaguensis monstrosa
Please note that this is NOT synonymous with Trichocereus santaensis, which is a regional form of Trichocereus pachanoi or Trichocereus peruvianus that looks substantially different and originally comes from the Santa Valley in Peru.
I also seen this labeled Trichocereus santiagoensis monstruosa, but I rather think that this is some kind of a spelling error. The plant grows mostly spineless and looks like a very thick spineless variety of a TBM. This plant is really rare and is not related to the two similar looking Lophocereus monstrosa cultivars that exist too. The spines are light brown and look like the spines on a standard Spachianus.
I am not sure how it got into cultivation but it is believed that this is actually a nursery-produced cultivar. The plant is sometimes available in our Trichocereus Facebook Group and I recently saw quite a lot of them offered for sale.
Check out our main plant database pages for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
SS01 (Trichocereus peruvianus) was brought into cultivation by Sacred Succulents. It is one of their oldest clones, going back many years and the number of hybrids that involves it is really high. It actually is a very blue Trichocereus that would usually be called Tr. peruvianus or Tr. macrogonus outside the SS nursery. The origin of this plant is unknown, but because of Sacred Succulent´s constant work with this clone, it is widely distributed.
Here is an excerpt from the Sacred Succulents description of SS01:
SS01 (Trichocereus peruvianus )
Columnar cactus up to 8´+ tall. Fat blue-green stems up to 6″ in diameter and 2″+ spines. Huge white nocturnal flowers. Can grow very fast; up to several feet a year. Tends to grow prostrate with age. We believe this to be a clone of either Trichocereus macrogonus or Trichocereus peruvianus. Cold hardy to 25° Fahrenheit.
My personal impression of this plant is that it is one of the plants that were originally sold by Karel Knize. Those were really common at the time this clone showed up and I would not be surprised if it was one of them.
Sacred Succulents used this clone to create many hybrids with this clone. Check out the Sacred Succulents website.
SS02 stands for a certain clone brought into cultivation by Ben Kamm & his nursery Sacred Succulents. It is a relatively short-spined Trichocereus bridgesii that is known to produce some mind-boggling offspring. Most of the hybrids produced with this plants do not look like a standard Bridgesii and due to the fact that Sacred Succulents has been offering them for years, there is a huge number of different Hybrids available.
Here is an excerpt of Sacred Succulent´s description:
Dense candelabra stands to 16´tall. Blue/green frosted stems up to 5″ in diameter with 5 – 7 ribs. Each areole bears 2 – 4 central spines up to 1.5″ long. White nocturnal flowers. The new growth on old stemps is often spineless. A distinct form of Trichocereus bridgesii. Cold hardy to 25° Fahrenheit.
Photos of Trichocereus bridgesii SS02 by SAB member Nitrogen
And here are some hybrids that were created with his clone! If you want to some cuttings or seeds, check out the Sacred Succulents website and ask for their seed list.
(SS02 x Tom Juul´s Giant) x Tr. peruvianus / Photo: Noah Reams
Two seedling grafts made by SAB member Nitrogen. Left: (SS02 x pachanoi) x TPM Right: TPM x SS02
Sacred Succulents used this hybrid to produce an endless list of follow-up hybrids. Some of those are:
Check out our main plant database pages for Trichocereus pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi here:
APRICOT GLOW is a classic Trichocereus hybrid by Mark Dimmitt. …
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