Strange Oreocereus    8/7/21
This is my cactus hobby-horse. Everyone needs a hobby horse. I keep on asserting that this is not an Oreocereus celsianus, and anyone who even slightly cares says it is. Of course, they only ever see the plant for their conclusion, My flower picture can be faked. One bit of evidence is that this flower is the wrong color and the wrong shape to be an O. celsianus flower. (From me - what more evidence do you need??) This is a violet-red colored flower that is radially symmetrical. O. celsianus has orange flowers and the flowers are zygomorphic. Strongly zygomorphic. (Zygomorphic is like a tea kettle spout. The flower opening is the end of the spout.) Also, the flowers of the pictured plant appear anywhere on the top part of the stem, including more than a foot (30 cm) below the apex. O. celsianus flowers are at the growing tip of the plant, never a foot or more below the apex. The stem you see to the right of my mystery plant is a true O. celsianus. I would never argue with its id., except that it has the wrong color spines, and....Oh. Sorry. I'm not supposed to argue. The spine appearance, and count, are in the gaussian distribution of O. celsianus characteristics. But why has that plant never, ever had a single flower in all the 40-plus years I've had it. The O. celsianus plants that I acquired (from Indian Rock Greenhouses, Woodburn, OR) along with this plant have been flowering for about 20 years.   (089/112)   

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