Mammillaria gigantia which keeps toppling over

[delandmo]

I don,t want to steal AJM,s interesting thread, but I have always wondered if my unamed plant was M gigantia ? It's about six inches in diameter. But I can see from Chris,s pics this is not so.Ah well back to google lol. Cheersimage.jpegimage.jpeg

Looking at your second photo, I wonder whether or not there are signs of the beginnings of the plant dividing dichotomously. I might be wrong. If that was the case, it would narrow the field.

[Eric Williams]

Thanks for the info DeImondo will keep an eye on it. for AJM you might have to put plan B into operation. For many years I fought with Mamm applanata to stop it leaning but failed. I let it do its own thing and this happened lol. Still a nice plant but wants its own space.

[discolover]

Hi Eric,
The plant you show (long leaning white plant) is probably Mammillaria albilanata and certainly not Mammillaria applanata (= form of Mammillara heyderi ssp. heyderi).

[Eric Williams]

Hi Discolover, thanks for the heads up re this plant. Loads of googling only come up wth young plants. This plant is old, and refuses to keep vertical lol. I wonder if it grows this way in the wild, or perhaps hanging down on a cliff face. Anyway I got to like it. Cheers

[Terry S.]

For reference, here is a Mammillaria gigantea photographed at about 20 years from seed sowing:

It is about 15cm across and subsequently developed a corky base. So I chopped it off and rerooted the top even though it had a very big cut surface, so that it is now back to how it should look. Seed from this plant and a friend went out on the Mam Soc seed list about 6 or 7 years ago.

[delandmo]

Indeed Terry did and I raised several plants from that seed. Incidentally, Terry got one of those plants back in our branch raffle at North Surrey.