Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

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Nobody
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Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Nobody »

Does anyone have a list of known intergeneric hybrids in cacti?
These papers list some interesting crosses:

ROWLEY , G.D. (1994) Spontaneous bigeneric hy-
brids in Cactaceae. Bradleya 12: 2-7.

ROWLEY , G.D. (2004a) Intergeneric hybrids in Cac-
taceae - 2004 update. Brit. Cact. Succ. J. 22(2):
64-65, ill.

ROWLEY , G.D. (2004b) Intergeneric hybrids in Cac-
taceae - an update. Cact. Syst. Init. No. 18: 11-
28, ills.

This includes Cleistocactus × Echinocereus and Echinopsis × Echinocereus, as well as Echinopsis × Selenicereus. More if you consider Harrisia different than Echinopsis, I don't.

In fact I use a convention found here: http://www.cactusinhabitat.org/index.php?p=booklet and here:
http://www.cactusinhabitat.org/index.php?p=generi
So many of the intergeneric hybrids involving Echinopsis and other related plants are to me just interpsecific crosses in Echinopsis. This includes Oreocereus as a species of Echinopsis, something I will likely discuss later when I get to the topic of the taxonomy.

In the paper A putative Oreocereus x Echinopsis hybrid from southern Bolivia
Urs Eggli & Mario Giorgetta 2013
Link: https://giorgetta.ch/files/pdf/eggli_et ... hybrid.pdf
Several interesting hybrids between genera are listed in Table one.

This is from the appendix to table one:

Hybrids with one parent from outside tribe Trichocereeae:
Cleistocactus × Echinocereus: × Cleistonocereus (Rowley 2004a)
Echinopsis × Aporocactus (now syn. of Disocactus): ×Aporechinopsis → ×Disonopsis (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis × Echinocereus: ×Echinocereopsis (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis × Epiphyllum: ×Echinophyllum (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis × Nopalxochia (now syn. of Disocactus): ×Echinopalxochia → ×Disonopsis (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis (as Chamaecereus / as Lobivia) × Parodia (as Notocactus): ×Chamecactus = ×Notolobivia →×Echinoparodia (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis × Selenicereus: ×Seleniopsis (Rowley 2004b)
Echinopsis (as Lobivia) × Sulcorebutia (Ritter 1981): ×Weinganopsis Rowley 1994
Harrisia (as Eriocereus) × Cereus (Ritter 1981): ×Harricereus (Rowley 1994)
Harrisia × Selenicereus: ×Selenirisia (Rowley 2004b)

Cleistocactus × Echinocereus is interesting, though I consider Cleistocactus to be Echinopsis but Echinocereus are known to be the dwarf forms of the Pachycereoid cacti.

Many people are unaware of the ability of cacti to cross a little bit more freely than most other known plants. One of the reasons for this is that some unlikely crosses only succeed on occasion. In some families hundreds of thousands of crosses between different species are needed to achieve success because of the low likelyhood of success. If a person tried only 60,000 crosses and they all failed, they might form the erroneous opinion that the cross is impossible. In fact this type of limited thinking is widespread and after only a few failures many people actually give up on such things as interspecific and intergeneric hybridization with cacti.

This is without considering the use of methods such as auxin application to prevent fruit abortion and cut-style pollination, and other methods that people use to assist this type of hybridization.

Another objection to this type of work is based on plant racism, where the idea of pure species verses mixed species has in many ways mirrored the topic of race in other social arenas. The influence of the Nazi cactus taxonomist Ritter may also play a hidden role here, but that is another topic.
However recent molecular evidence has also indicated that over time cacti have frequently crossed with one another and that many of the species we now know actually arose as combinations of distinct forms from distinct populations. In other words racial purity rarely exists in nature and then it tends to be associated with inbreeding and defects related to this. That pure species people harp on and on about only arose because it had different ancestors.

Likewise positive sense heterosis in cacti (aka hybrid vigor) and their hybrids shows that nature offers rich rewards for hybridization,where rather than suffer from increased sterility and poor growth as is often found in interspecific crosses in other families (Capsicum has good examples of this) the novel hybrid cacti often grow faster, larger, healthier and are highly fertile, though a percentage of their F2 and F3 offspring often do run into issues do to inbreeding defects, however it is not unusual for a percentage of the F2 and F3 cacti to resemble a new species quite distinct from either parent as well. In fact this is one of the known mechanisms of hybrid speciation in cacti.

I have a specific interest in hybrid cacti (pun intended) and am looking for examples of actual photographs of Intergeneric crosses as well as peoples experiences with them.

On this note I will also share an anecdote. I once met a man who grew Pediocacti here in Utah. He had a yard full of them.
He was the biggest supplier to Mesa Garden at that time of Pediocactus.

They all flowered together and he didn't isolate them whatsoever and he literally sold the seed labeled as pure species, when it was open pollinated. I asked him about reproductive isolation and he said he did not think they even crossed. They do, but not only this, he had different forms of Pediocactus simpsonii co-flowering and for him to believe that these did not cross and to sell his seeds to various companies as pure, was less than ideal. Because of this type of thing many of the seeds available as Pediocactus in the US are not actually true to type. This also played a role in some of the Pediocactus seeds on the market having issues with germination.

These plants are much more promiscuous than people realize, many plants in horticulture do not resemble their actual namesake populations in the wild for this reason, but also many populations in nature also do not resemble the species the taxonomists claim they are. As time goes on I will address this further in relation to the taxonomy and the molecular data (probably in a Blog format) For now however I'd like to call attention to the existence of hybrids that many people are not aware of as having been made or even being possible.

Thank you for your time.
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mmcavall
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by mmcavall »

Hi Nobody, thanks for your colaboration to the forum. There are many topics of discussion in your text, I will not cover all of them.

"These plants are much more promiscuous than people realize": that's interesting. In other families, hibridization is very common and many hybrids are comercially released every year (in Orchidaceae, for example) or can be found in nature.

We don't see many cacti hybrids, and there may be a reason for that.

What I mean is: perhaps, as you said, there may be much more hybrids than people are aware, but hybridization in cacti is somehow much less frequent than in several other families, I think. ( I'm talking about intergeneric or interespecifc hybrids). Certainly after 60,000 failures I would consider that hybridization is , if not impossible, rare... definetely not common or frequent.

Concerning diferent populations of the same species, there may be lots of "hybrids". We have plants labelled with field numbers but they are all (mostly) already mixed in the collections. I have some plants of the same species, but with different field numbers, and have already noticed that keeping them isolated is very dificult (I would need "bee-proof" greenhouse). For this reason, I dont use the field numbers in my own seeds , because I know admixtures happens, but I am sure most people keep the field numbers even when there are several different field numbers visited by little bees in the same greenhouse.

Back to interespecif crosses, I'm particularly interested in Mammillaria and tried some crosses. I tried some crosses within groups of more related species. I dont have a conclusive impression until now. I had very poor germination but in some cases a seedling or two sprouted (but it can be the product of self-fertilization?). However, my interest in hybridization is exactly to prevent it, not to generate hybrids. I want to collect seeds from the Mammillarias and be sure they are pure species, and not interespecific hybrids, for this reason I tried to generate hybrids and see what happens.

For instance, it is possible that most of Mammillaria carmenae rubrispina we find in the collections are mixed with M. laui. The carmenae I grew from Aymeric seeds are quite different (flowers, fruits) from those more commonly find in the collections here (so maybe they are "pure"?).

In brief: I'm very interested in hybridization and I know very little about it. I've searched for this in the forum and created some threads, but overall, people say that hybridization in cacti is not common.

Final note: I really prefere "pure species", I'm not too much into hybrids, they are not appealing to me. I understand that in nature hybridization occurs and I think it is marvelous to imagine all the infinite combinations of genes that could arise from intergeneric or interespecfici crosses. But in the end, I'm not very interested in them. There is no right or wrong.
SarrCrazy
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by SarrCrazy »

Wish this thread would've continued. Very interesting.
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Hanazono
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Hanazono »

I did a small scale of trial which started in 2015.

Purpose of the trial: Red flowering strombocactus disciformis was existing but I tried to recreate it by myself.
Species 1: a standard strombocactus disciformis
species 2: turbinicarpus alonsoi
Both species were not self-fertile. It was an intergeneric hybridization.

Pollen receiver x pollen supplier, in 2015
Case A: 1 x 2, I could harvest seeds.
Case B: 2 x 1, I could harvest seeds.

Sown seeds in 2016
Seeds from case A were not germinated at all.
Seeds from case B were shown a good germination rate.

Several seedings of case B were grafted to see result earlier. They were degrafted after confirmed the flower colour.
Trial result: failure
Flower colour-red
Body-similar to alonsoi, it is not same but similar to alonsoi, I expected body of disciformis but ----

4 degrafted scions have survived. The attachd photo is one of them.
Attachments
A 1st filial intergeneric hybrid
A 1st filial intergeneric hybrid
IMG_3490 - Copy.JPG (136.07 KiB) Viewed 1257 times
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Nino_G
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Nino_G »

Very nice looking plant Frank. I have seen a photo posted by a Italian grower of a (alleged) hybrid between T. alonsoi and Ariocarpus retusus. Plant looks like normal T. alonsoi with exception of a flower which is pale pink instead of magenta of regular T. alonsoi.
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Hanazono
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Hanazono »

G'morning Nino_G,
a Italian grower of a (alleged) hybrid between T. alonsoi and Ariocarpus retusus.
The flowering seasons of T. alonsoi and A. retusus are different. I assume the Italian grower stored pollen about 6 months.

Frank
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Nino_G
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Nino_G »

Hello Frank,
I have several mature T. alonsoi specimens in my collection and they flower at least three times a year. Last flowers this year appeared at mid-October which coincides with flowering season of most Ariocarpus species in my area (Croatia borders with Italy, so I guess their conditions are similar).
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Hanazono
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Re: Intergeneric hybrids in Cacti

Post by Hanazono »

G'morning Nino_G,
Last flowers this year appeared at mid-October which coincides with flowering season of most Ariocarpus species in my area
Thanks for your information. I have understood. We live in different locations.

I just thought the Italian stored pollen because I fill dried pollen in a gelatine capsule and stored it in a fridge with drying agent by myself quite offten.

Frank
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