E. cinerascens??

I've had this plant for many years and it's never flowered for me until now, so I've had a real sense of excitement about it since I saw it's bud appearing in early spring.
The plant used to belong to my wife before we were married nearly 30 years ago, so it's been around for a while. It's a slow grower, and I've broken up the clump a number of times.
It has remained nameless all these years, but now with the help of this beautiful large flower, I've been a-checkin' on possible dubs.
The stems have six ribs, are 4cm in diameter, 8 radial spines, 1 central, sometimes a couple of sub-centrals. Flower is approx 12cm across... or would have been if it had opened completely.

I'm thinking it is Echinocereus cinerascens, what do you think?


E. knippelianus...


And another of my morricallii in flower.


Still more Echinocereus buds coming on, so more flower pics to come.

Cheers, CP.

wow that Echinocereus morricallii flower is to die for!

Sorry, not much help here. Cinerascens is certainly a candidate, but so are a few others I think...
Great plants and photo's though !

do you think the weather has varied slightly down there CP... how come recently two plants that haven't flowerd are showing their true colours?
or is it that these plants just take a long time to reach maturity?

BTW great flowers & photos mate!!! always impressive

regards
Darren

Dunno about a change in weather. It's maybe been warmer for longer this year. I don't know what part of Tas CP is in (I'm assuming from the Sunshine Coast reference somewhere on the east coast.. Swansea area maybe), but here in the NW I've also got an old cactus (also part of a much older cactus clump... is fairly fast growing though), which I think is either an Echinocereus or an Echinopsis, that I have never seen flowers on. It didn't flower last year either... would like to know if you tried anythng different to maybe kick-start its flowering. I've just potted it on into a 25cm pot to give you an idea of scale. I was really hoping it would have flowered last season to help get me closer to an ID... always next spring . It was growing outside during the winter the least few years. Do you think the frosts may have killed off any developing flower buds? It's in excellent condition so I don't really see any reason for it not flowering. This is my old flowerless plant:




This particular clump is about 4 years old now. The original clump was nearly 2ft in diametre. Judging from the growth rate of this one, which was only 4 offsets when I potted it 4 years ago, it would also be 30 odd years old... taking offsets doesn't reset the age does it? They should still be mature offsets capable of flowering almost straight away I would have thought???

BTW CP, I must say how much I have enjoyed looking at your excellent photos and reading your posts since joining... a real inspiration to growing cacti down here in Tas! If you are in the NW and you ever want to drop in for a coffee you are more than welcome (if you don't mind kids and chooks and dogs and ducks and cats and all manner of other animals running around all over the place. It's a bit of a mad-house around here ).

TasV that looks like an Echinopsis and if you wanted to speed things up in teh flowering department just keep them solitary , keep flicking off the pups which sap flower producing energy, probably too late to do this with yours tho...but it works for me....and your in the north west of tas? doesnt it rain alot there? do you need to protct your cacti much from the elements? just curious as we may be neighbours too one day ,got to love tassie...oh yeah and CP you are an inspiration to cold climate growers everywhere

Yep.. Up near Devonport. Rains a lot here during winter (especially last winter... needed gills to get around last winter), so I've been bringing some of them inside during the winter to dry out. Some, like the one above, gets left outside because it doesn't seem to affect them. Just today I've put up a little greenhouse and moved everything into it. Hopefully they will be able to over-winter more safely in it this year. It's only a little cheapie, however, and I'm not expecting it to last much more than a year. During that time a more substantial and larger one will be built to replace it.

I've heard about keeping them solitary to induce flowering. I might remove one of the offsets off this one and keep it solitary to see if I can get some flowers out of it (I agree... I was tending towards Echinopsis too). I'll leave this plant to clump at-will because I also really like the clumping habit as well.

Thanks TasV & blowng for your kind words...

TasV... it looks like you and I are neighbours.
Is there any place other than the NW coast, more fitting to be called
Tassie's sunshine coast? forget the east coast...

You plant is definitely Echinopsis, I'm unsure, but they look like small offsets of E. (Tricho.) schickendantzii.
If grown in the ground I would expect the mature stems to grow to be 100mm or so in dia., and 600mm or more in height.
What are the dimensions of the original plant stems from where you got yours?
I have grown schickendantzii in a pot outside, but growth was somewhat slow, but it like space so once planted in the ground it took off and never looked back.
Schickendantzii should look like this:




CP.

PS. Devonport... the centre of the Sunshine Coast of Tas.

Hi CP,

Devonport huh.. that's cool... we are indeed neighbours then. I teach science/maths/marine science at Ulverstone High and live in Forth (and steering away from it this weekend... the town has the 'blues' this weekend ). Your success with your outdoor cactus garden is even more inspiring then given we have the same climate (I was thinking rain shadow... East Coast... last time I was out there it was so dry I half expected to see cactus growing everywhere ). Is there any other place??? Well... hmmmm... we moved here form Norfolk Island... that's gonna take some beating

The original plant was growing at a property we rented in Cuprona (near Burnie) when we first arrived in Tas. It was a cluster of heads growing in the ground near 2ft in diametre made up of hundreds of heads not more than say 100-150mm in diamtre but also not more than 200mm tall. It was planted under a awning, however, and got very little water (or care) at all so maybe it was stunted by the conditions??? I actually looked at those photos of yours in your outdoor garden post and thought it looked very similar to my unknown one based on its spination alone. It seems to have a very vigorous root system that grows much faster than it offsets filling its pot very quickly and becoming potbound... even in quite deep pots. It's just been repotted as I mentioned above into a 25cm pot so I'm half expecting a bit of a growth spurt... I think on the next repotting I too will put mine in the ground to see what it does. If it is schickendantzii and it turns out half as nice as your plant I will be very happy.

TasV wrote:

... Is there any other place??? Well... hmmmm... we moved here form Norfolk Island... that's gonna take some beating

Yes, I suppose if you put it that way... That's quite a change in climate for you.

Would like to catch up sometime, pm me if you like.

Cheers.

CP

wow, echinocereus flowers rule, I think I have to get my hands on some!

Great pics

mutant wrote:

...I think I have to get my hands on some!

Great
pics

Yes I reckon you should too!

Glad you enjoyed my pics


CP