Something unusual - Merged ? Fused? Cristate? Mammillaria theresae flower

Thought this bud on the left looked a bit different to normal as it formed.


IMG_3960a (Medium) by Navajoa, on Flickr


Certainly was, it's actually two flowers fused together to form one. Notice the two stigmas.


IMG_4003a (Medium) by Navajoa, on Flickr

Always something new and surprising happening with our plants !!

Beautiful flower!! Such a vibrant colour.

WOW!

What kind of fruit will that make?

well i'll be damned. never heard of a crested flower before.

Wait...

If this flower is crested then if you had gotten to it earlier before the meristem had differentiated into the stigmas then you might have been able to pull it off, give it some hormones and turn the crested ovary into a crested stem and have a crested cactus as the result.

The flower is nice though, so leaving it was probably the best thing to do in the absence of some mad scientists.

Cereoid wrote:

What kind of fruit will that make?

Good question! I've tried to pollinate it and theresae are usually easy to set seed on so stay tuned...not sure if we'll ever REALLY get to see it though as the pods don't really protrude from the body of the plant at all in this species. In this picture of another plant you can see a pod ripening in the centre on the dead flower, eventually it'll shrink away and you'll only see the fried "cap" or "door" of the pod between the tubercule.


IMG_4002 (Medium) by Navajoa, on Flickr

Cereoid wrote:

Wait...

If this flower is crested then if you had gotten to it earlier before the meristem had differentiated into the stigmas then you might have been able to pull it off, give it some hormones and turn the crested ovary into a crested stem and have a crested cactus as the result.

The flower is nice though, so leaving it was probably the best thing to do in the absence of some mad scientists.

We'll have no Frankenmamms here please !  

In this one you can see the double thick flower stem or I think it's the pedicel from memory..


IMG_3998 (Medium) by Navajoa, on Flickr

Wow that's an awesome nice flower. It is splitting hairs but i reckon it is effectively conjoined twin flowers as opposed to a crested flower which would have a single fasciated stigma. Beautiful and strange none the less...
My apologies for freeloading on your thread Nav but I thought I would share this weird flower on a T. Valdeziana. It's psuedopetals(sepals) on the perianth(not sure of the floral anatomy vocab) are all fused on both sides and it is growing in  the place of the apical meristem on a crested pup as opposed to on an areole. When it comes to strangeness there seems no end to the variety of mutations, are we witnessing the rise of the Xplants?
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Yes I think we are crypto, wild collected seeds are becoming quite rare these days, the more we interfere with the growing cycle through human cultivation the more of these types of freaks we will see. I say bring it on !! I'm all for the freaks, I know other people don't like them for what ever reason but so long as they are hardy and grow well I think they are unique and special. Nice plant BTW

sweet baby jebus

Yeah I had the same with a Astrophytum