Ariocarpus flowers

cactuspic · Post by **cactuspic** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:15 am

Earlier this fall, at a time when little else was happening in my greenhouse,several of my ariocarpus bloomed. The first two ariocarpus are miniatures in the area of 1 inch. The flowers can hide the entire plant. The last plant, Ariocarpus trigona, is substantially larger and has a delicate white flower.

With their unusual shapes and extremely slow growth, ariocarpus are highly prized by collectors. Hope you enjoy.

Irwin

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:15 am

First one from the tubercle ends looks like Ariocarpus scapharostris? the second Ariocarpus macdowelii?

The third is interesting because it does look like Ariocarpus trigonus, but that usually has a pale yellow flower. Though I suppose that is variable. Ariocarpus retusus usually has a white flower, but the tubercles don't look like that. However the form of A. retusus known as Ariocarpus confusus can have from a white to pink flower and Ariocarpus macdowelii goes from white to pink within the same population, so I suppose the flower colour can vary quite a lot. I had not seen a white flowered A. trigonus before though.

DaveW

cactuspic · Post by **cactuspic** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 10:03 pm

Dave, you are right on the first, which is A. scapharostris. The second one (Ariocarpus kotschubeyanus ) is more difficult to ID because there is not much plant showing. You nailed the last. It is trigona. The flower is a yellowish creme, not exactly white.

Irwin

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 6:25 am

Being pedantic Irwin it is trigonus. Because of all this masculine/feminine and neuter endings in Latin that I could never grasp, being only a secondary school pupil who left to start work at 15, except that if the generic ending is us the specific ending is us not a and vice versa.

It also changes if you move the species from a genus ending in us to one ending in a (for instance Notocactus mammulosus becomes Parodia mammulosa on transfer)

But I have never yet been given a proper explanation as to why it was always Notocactus scopa!

Anyway I thought you were a lawyer? Evidently botanical Latin is different to legal Latin

DaveW

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:03 pm

Ah! That explains why Google kept telling me about Euphorbia trigona, when I was asking about Ariocarpus.

Despite many years of schooling, I have never tried to make sense of biology naming conventions. (Of course, most of my schooling was in math & engineering.

)

And I have at least one friend (a part-time editor, in fact) who laments that "In the old days, it was expected that every well-educated person would know several ways to spell each word!"

But pedantry aside, the search engines have now given exact spellings a completely new level of importance --- copy-paste-search just doesn't work right otherwise.

Irwin, the photos are beautiful. Stacked, or just a carefully chosen aperture?

--Rik

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:40 pm

If you want to know all about Ariocarpus Rik try this one:-

http://www.living-rocks.com/

DaveW

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:43 pm

Beautiful Images Irwin. You fellas have my head spinning around with all this latin talk

I have been wanting to get some Haworthia. All these plants are very interesting because they are so strange. I have been wanting to get some Haworthia for a while but have no room in my house for any more plants

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:14 pm

For Doug:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haworthia

http://www.cocozzacollection.org.uk/haw ... _seeds.htm

DaveW

cactuspic · Post by **cactuspic** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:35 am

Sorry about the delay in responding. My computer would not boot up and was in the shop for several days.

Rik, all three were images stacks. Thanks for you kind thoughts.

Thanks Doug for viewing and commenting. If you want Haworthias, please send my your address. I am constantly giving away pups.

Irwin