BCSS - Forum

How long from this to that, I wonder ...

Well, by two months mine looked like

One of those seedlings above (saint-pieana), yesterday.

E. saint-pieana (often claimed to be no more than a hairy form of iquiquensis) is the plant most often seen in collections. Here's my older plant, behind another, labelled taltalensis. Having started off as a cutting, the stem is fat at the bottom, then thin and then fattens out again, which isn't a great look, so hopefully the seedlings will grow up to be a better shape.

There are lots of different field numbers in the seedlists - it seems every Chile explorer grabs a few fruit as they go along, though as few would claim to be any good at identifying them and their habitats overlap a bit, identifications might not prove to be correct. You can certainly have fun looking to see what comes up. they're easy from seed and germination seems to be pretty good for the ones I've tried.

Not only is it difficult to tell the species apart, they grow alongside Leucostele chiloensis and L. 'deserticola' from which they can be difficult to distinguish. Consequently, seed comes up that you doubt is Eulychnia:

Eulychnia castanea spiralis Eulychnia saint pieana normal and cristata