Matucana madisoniorum v albiflora

[Sylvia]

This Matucana in flower today, one of my favourites:-

Matucana madisoniorum v albiflora 3.JPG (50.86 KiB) Viewed 2365 times

[TS Hakansson]

i´m no expert on Matucanas, but the flowers do not look like normal matucana flowers ?

[Phil_SK]

There is the suggestion that it's a stabilised hybrid of a Matucana and an Espostoa. See p11. of http://www.crassulaceae.ch/uploads/file ... 5%20HQ.pdf under Anhaloniopsis Σmadisoniorum.

[topsy]

When we visited C&Js wholesale plant nursery in Vista, California in 2001 they had this flower colour form of Mat Mad which they had selectively bred from a plant or two which occurred in the vast array of plants they grew from seed some years before, their breeding colony was flowering well at the time (July). I am sure that this phenomenon has occurred in other collections.

I know that day and night flowering genera do on occasions hybridise but I really cannot believe that Espostoa is involved in this plant's genes.

We do seem to be fixated on a certain flower colour for a certain plant depending on what flower colour was in the original description and was introduced to growers, but with recessive genes plants outside the "norm" will occur given the quantity of plants grown from seed.

Suzanne Mace

[iann]

I'm pretty sure this is a bog-standard one

[DaveW]

I agree with Suzanne, that particular hybrid seems unlikely.

Whilst Darwin was correct about selection of the fittest, that alone is far too slow for past evolution to have worked. It is now thought mutation plays a part in providing a quicker path by providing a larger pool of variation for natural selection to act upon. Aso natural hybridity may play a part.

There seem to be white flowered clones of many cactus species now due to mutation or recessive genes which probably do not exist or last for long in the wild due to natural selection eliminating them for not being as robust as the usual form. However these are usually nursed and carefully propagated in cultivation.

Some of the following may exist in the wild, but most are simply selected clones and cultivars that don't exist in the habitat.

http://www.ruegenkaktus-weiss.de/albifloras.htm

As to variation in flower or spine colour within a population. In the "splitter" days with few visiting habitat these were often given different variety names, or in some cases called different species. As an example of flower colour variation in habitat this example of Eriosyce chilensis by Roger Ferryman shows how variable it can be. As Roger once said to me, in cultivation we get used to "The British Standard Species" that is now virtually a clone and think all plants in the wild population must look like that".