What's going on with this Trich?

G'day people...

I've got a number of cuttings of this mystery Trich growing quite happily in pots. For a bit of background: I got the parent plant from an open garden over near the Gippsland lakes about a decade ago. It's one of those old gardens probably dating back to the turn of the 20th century, and it had a number of "traditional" cacti and succulents growing there. I've never seen this plant flower, and for a long time I guessed it to be a spach or similar. However, the growth habit has me puzzled.





As you can see, it's basically columnar. I reckon it's either a spach or a schick (if anyone can tell me which, I'd be most grateful), however as you can see from the second photo, it's pupping like mad, from pretty much every areole. Now, this seems to be happening close to the base so I'm wondering whether this is due to mechanical trauma such as insect attack. However, I've also heard that pathogens can induce a similar reaction.

Does anyone have any ideas?

OK I have two of these, a very large two-branched one in the garden which is producing a small pup, but I also have one in a pot which had produced a single pup, now it has just produced another two. All are lower down than yours, but the huge Daddy (now unfortunately disposed of) I remember had a massive clump, absolutely loads of them in a tree-like structure.
So I am guessing it might be normal. Mine only started flowering recently

What colour flowers did you get? I'm guessing they were white...

Yeah, awesome big white ones. But only when it got to about six feet high, the one in the pot won't flower.
On second inspections yours is a lot shorter and fatter than mine though, but I am pretty sure the spines and ribs are the same.
I'll pop a pic up shortly, my computer is refusing to read my memory card

ok here are the flowers, it flowers at night. Your does look like a miniature version of the original plant of this one, used to offshoot like crazy. I posted pics of one a while ago and I think you told me it was a spach...

I got a similar one , oxygona family [darker, non yellowish spines mostly] which does pup a lot in the base while maintaining big mother heads... I suppose it could well be the growing habit for echinopsis... and not some outside attack...

That's quite true... Echinopsis do tend to pup quite profusely, however it's less common in the old Trichocereus group which is what I am guessing this plant belongs to. Most spachs, peruvians and pachs that I have seen are largely solitary, with only the occasional pup from the base, and even then that usually happens only once they've reached quite a respectable size, or in those examples that have been given the chop...

This particular... Trich, Echinopsis... whateveritis... seems to combine the growth habits of both.