Sulco seed field numbers

Recently I have developed an interest in growing sulcos. I have been reading a bit about them, mostly on the Sulcopassion site. There's a lot more to it than I first expected. Particularly when it comes to the names!

A lot of the plants I've seen and read about have field numbers, eg. Sulcorebutia swobodae HS 27. I've read that if you want a plant that has a field number, that ideally this should be a clone of the 'original'. Eg for HS 27 that'd be a clone of one of the original plants/seeds collected in Bolivia by Heinz Swoboda back in 1982.

Because its pretty well impossible to import plants or cuttings into Australia, it seems that the only realistic way to get these varieties is by using seed. However I've read that this seed doesn't always 'run true' to the original. This is supposedly due to problems with accidental and/or sloppy pollination creating unexpected crosses. Other things such as sloppy labeling were also mentioned.

So I was wondering if anyone has had any experience of growing Sulco seeds sold with field numbers. Seeing as i don't have much of a choice I'm going to try the seeds anyway. In any case it'll still be interesting to grow them. But I'm curious about these concerns with Sulco seed, and if they really are much of a problem.

cheers

Sulco's are one of my favorite types of cacti. I was very lucky in purchasing an entire collection of sulco's some 450+ mature plants most of which were imported as single heads many years ago. I have grown some from seed and i find that sulco's are quite variable.
Some will have different color spines etc. I am in the process of propagating my sulco's mainly from offsets though i have an abundance of seed also.
I do have some seed available and some offsets though i am not going to do a list as it takes too much time. But if there is anything that your after let me know as i will try to help were i can.
Cheers Luke

Many thanks for that! Currently my sulco collection stands at the grand total of one. Someone gave me a small piece that I have grafted onto a Myrto. That was the other day, I think the graft has taken. I have no idea what species it is - but Im told it has yellow flowers.

So I'm very much a beginner with this group of plants. Nevertheless I have been reading and looking at pictures! And as i've been doing this I have been making a list of plants. This list just keeps getting longer and longer. There's so many of them!

I saw pictures of your plants in a previous thread and they look truly wonderful. I'd be more than happy with anything with which I could start a small collection.

450+ plants is a heck of a score! There must be 100's of varieties.I imagine that it'd have to be one of the biggest collections in the country! Do you still collect more? I'm all in favour of protecting Australia from noxious species etc., but its a pity we can't really import plants anymore.

Its interesting that you've noticed a fair bit of variation with the seed grown plants. Have any of them flowered? I'm curious about how much variation might happen there. I like growing seed because of variability that can occur. I suppose that if you were really keen you could start a selective breeding programme! Have you tried creating hybrids?

That big Aust. cactus seed site has 100s of Rebutias. Within that lot there are lots of sulcos. (As you'd know sulcos, Weingartia and Cintia have all been recombined under Rebutia.) A lot of them have field numbers. But after what I've read I'm not sure what I'd be getting. But I will try some anyway - it'd be interesting to see what pops up!

cheers

Fwiw I checked up a bit more on the use of field numbers. Apparently they are applied to clones of any of the plants collected from the original population. Specific individuals from this collection may also get an additional identifying number eg. S.dorana HJ807/12 is a clone of S.dorana HJ807 plant number12 .

Subsequent generations produced from pure individuals can be given an F number. Eg. S. dorana HJ807(F1), produced by crossing 2 pure HJ807.

I pretty much just lifted this stuff off that sulcopassion site. They explain it better than I do.

I guess that originally I wondered how closely plants grown from seeds with field numbers would resemble the original plants with the same numbers. Given that the parent plants were sampled from one population, I suppose its reasonable to assume that range of variability shown by the seedlings would be within the the range of variation shown in the original population. I wonder though, if further down the track, whether inbreeding wouldn't have an effect. But I'm only guessing!

cheers