The Chileans Volume 12, # 40:21

COPIAPOA LEMBCKEI sp. nov. by Curt Backeberg  

Translated by E. W. Bentley from Die Cactaceae Vol.III, 1960

At first globose, later more or less cylindrical, up to 15cm (or more) long, whitish grey-green, up to about 10cm diameter, with strong root; ribs 11, rounded, later about 2.3cm wide, not set obliquely; areoles set fairly closely, about 6mm apart, 7mm diameter, felted grey-black, black when wet, round; radial spines seemingly always 7, radiating up to 13mm Iong, straight or somewhat recurved: central spine 1, up to 2.2cm long somewhat pointing somewhat upward; all spines at first blackish to black, later going grey or of a dirty yellow colour and somewhat hoary-grey, the spines rather stiff, bristling out from the body in a fairly dense bundle, even to the extent of touching each other. Chile, north of Caldera.

I hope to give further details in Vol. VI. The species stands perhaps near C. cinerea, but has however a relatively small grey-white crown and by reason of its growth form and the smooth ribs, which are covered with a floury grey-white coating, and also the close bristling characteristically coloured spines, is a good and handsome species. I name it after its discoverer, Herr Lembcke, Santiago, Chile.

(In Backeberg‘s “Die Cactaceae“ Vol. VI, the further details concerning this species appeared under the heading of Copiapoa pendulina; a translation of these observations will appear in this series. In Backeberg‘s Kakteenlexikon, the entry reads “Flower - ?”. - H.M.).

Comments

From E. W. Bentley

My plant of Copiapoa lembckei was obtained from Sargant in the January of 1970 under Lau‘s number SH825 - said to be from North of Caldera. lt was about 75mm in diameter and had a pale elongated offset - obviously formed or at least grown on in the dark during transit. The flower, disappointingly small, opened on July 8th 1970. lt hardly emerged from the wool in the crown - compared with most Copiapoas which stand well out above the wool.

Now that I have the official description of this species, I would say that my SH825 fits it fairly well. The old areoles are about the right distance apart but by then are rather less than 7mm diameter. The radials are not very spreading, but they are indeed about 13mm long and the central spines are erect and about 22mm long. The young spines are not black at first; they are definitely brown and go black and then grey lower down the plant and they certainly do not touch laterally -only along the ribs. Perhaps that is what Backeberg meant because he says the ribs finish about 2.3cm apart - which is the case in my plant. I would have said that the epidermis was matt and bluish but perhaps not really “chalky“, for the epidermis is not too different from my “streptocaulon“. I have probably been paying too much attention to the wool dust that is formed fairly freely and tends to coat the upper part of the plant. This also happens, but less obviously, in the “streptocaulon“. The new wool in the crown is cream (as on SH829), not white, and so is the wool of the seed-grown plants of this species. I am reasonably sure that the miserable size of the C. lembckei flower is a permanent feature. The blooms that appeared these last two summers were no bigger than the flower that appeared soon after I bought the plant and they were also fairly embedded in the wool.

What puzzles me are the numerous seedlings that I have grown as C. lembckei. In these the spines do indeed begin black and are very like the offsets of the “streptocaulon“ and near enough to the offsets on the imported C. lembckei. None of them look as though they will ever grow into the latter type of plant and some are 8 to 9 years old.

From A. W. Craig

My plant of SH825 also came from Sargant; it has grown a little in cultivation and is now about 9 inches high and about 7 inches in diameter near the base; it is not quite cylindrical as it tapers slightly towards the top. There were 13 ribs on the habitat growth and two further ribs have appeared on the cultivated growth. The lower half of the plant has a very greyish coating and is not really corky; above that the body is matt green - that is, green with a chalky appearance. The uppermost part of the plant is a less chalky matt green colour. On the most recent growth the areoles are more or less 10mm apart, but on the early cultivated growth and on the last habitat growth the areoles are confluent and measure about 5mm across the wool. On the older habitat growth the areoles seem to have grown closer together vertically and are more or less 5 to 6mm apart; with regular spraying, much wool has been removed from the old areoles so they can be seen to be separated.

The crown is covered with a creamy-white wool from which the new chestnut brown spines appear. Later the spines go greyish but some of the old spines are a golden yellow colour something like the colour of the wool in the crown of my C. haseltoniana. The central spines are barely 20mm long and the radials are more or less 15mm long, pretty well straight. In the new areoles the radials are spreading, but with the compression of the old areoles the spines are either in line with the rib or else spreading sideways and projecting, so that on the bottom half of the ribs, there are three distinct vertical rows of spines.

This plant has now put out some flowers which looked as if they had no tube at all, they were so deeply immersed in the wool which grows over the crown of the plant.

From Mrs. L. Teare

I have three plants of C. lembckei, one of which is an imported plant that I obtained from Sargant and brought out with me from England. lt is 15cm high, 6cm diameter at the top and 9cm diameter at the base, 17 ribs, bluish green skin, one central spine 5mm long and six radials, white towards the base and reddish towards the top, except the lower radials which are a dirty grey black at the tip. This plant must have had its apex damaged in quarantine, as it has grown a “hat“ and a much more spiny one than the original plant; the areoles there are barely 2½ mm apart and the wool in this crown is creamy orange. Further offsets are growing all round the base and these are extremely spiny, just like the new growth at the crown. lt is now starting to put out more offsets about two-thirds the way up the body. But it has never flowered.

I also have two seedling plants and these are one of the slower growing of the Copiapoas. One of these three year old seedlings flowered this summer. The body is the same colour as the imported plant, but it has a velvety skin; it has twelve ribs that are more wavy than the import. The areoles are about 5mm apart, with one central spine about 10mm long pointing downwards and eleven radials, the lowermost the longest and 12mm long, the three lower spines slightly recurved, the next three on each side shorter and the two uppermost spines shorter still, the longer spines brown to black, the others reddish-brown, dark at the tip and straw coloured at the base. The spines are the same colour as those in the new growth on the imported plant, but weaker. The areoles are not very woolly, but the apex is completely covered with creamy wool. The second seedling has much stronger spines which are entirely black, from areole to tip, central 6mm long, radials 5mm long, with buff coloured wool on the areoles. The spines are nearer those on the import although this seedling is only 30mm diameter and the previous one is 50mm in diameter. So I am beginning to wonder if my first seedling really is a C. lembckei as the spines on the areole are set out quite differently, and the body is quite definitely smooth and velvety. Can there be such variation in one species?

Some time ago I started a study group on Copiapoa out here and although I have Backeberg‘s books, Britton & Rose, Taxon, and Cactus (the old one), we still cannot trace anything about a number of Copiapoa. We have been lucky to get seeds of the rarer ones from Knize, but there is also the difficulty that the younger plants are so different from the mature ones. Can anyone help with our problem?

From E. W. Bentley

I have come to the conclusion that many Copiapoas have not only one juvenile form which can differ from the adult form, but two. One of these is in seedling plants and the other is seen when adult plants are offsetting. The offsets now breaking out of the C. longistaminea look as though they belong at the coquimbana / vallenarensis end of the shelf! An elongated Copiapoa with a yellowish-green body and slim, curved, ginger-brown spines has produced a number of offsets that I have removed and rooted up; these offsets have remained flattened globular in shape and have themselves put out further similar-looking offsets, so I now have a clump of flattened globular heads that has grown into a much larger pot than the original columnar parent.

Some Copiapoas also seem to vary very much according to whether they are on their own roots or not. One plant I have, when grafted, had the tubercles so flat that they were almost non-existent. After less than a year on its own roots (during which time it has flowered), its tubercles are now conical (like some Mammillarias) and each one has developed the distant miniature “spine“ or vestigal leaf below the areole. This particular feature can be seen in small seedlings of species such as C. hypogaea and in very young areoles in the crown of C. hypogaea and C. barquitensis. Another thing that has happened to this plant after I established it on its own roots, it is now hemispherical instead of spherical, and olive-green instead of purplish black. lt is all very difficult! This is the trouble with Copiapoas. There is no decent base line for many species; even seed comes up often differently from what the label leads one to expect.

However, I have no difficulty in visualizing two species that are closely related and several hundred miles apart, while other pairs are close together. You can overdo this business of geographical propinquity. Birds, for example, can carry seeds about and I doubt if there are big enough climatic and edaphic differences between one part of the coast of northern Chile and another that would determine whether a given species of Copiapoa would survive or not if accidentally carried there - though I am not saying that there have not been such differences in the geological past.

From R. Ferryman

I have insufficient Copiapoa seedlings and juvenile offsets to compare although I would expect offsets to look “more mature“. When young Copiapoa seedlings (up to three months old) are grafted on to Peireskiopsis, rather than bloating they form almost adult-looking plants very quickly. Why a 4-week old seedling should grow away to form the equivalent of a 2 to 3 year old plant within a few months intrigues me. Having grafted over 100 seedlings this year, I can confirm that only in certain circumstances do they grow bloated. This seems to indicate to me insufficient knowledge when raising seeds - we obviously don‘t know all we should.

From H. Middleditch

I have three seedling plants labelled C. lembckei which are quite consistent in having seven radial spines at each areole; they also exhibit the pale brown areole wool at all but the oldest areoles. An imported plant from Hallet, which came as Lau 809, but might have been 829 i.e. from north of Caldera, has up to eleven spines per areole; these are bunched together so that up to tour spines could be regarded as centrals. Two other imported plants exhibit as few as five spines at some areoles (possibly where the two topmost and weakest spines are missing), often nine spines per areole and not infrequently up to eleven. One plant has nine ribs and the other has thirteen. Should these plants be described as C. marginata because they do not “always“ have seven radial spines? Or should they have a new name altogether, because the rib count matches neither that for C. lembckei nor that for C. marginata? Or do we accept that Backeberg is describing just one plant of C. lembckei, not the range of rib and spine count in the population? And if this is so, can C. lembckei be synonymous with Echinocactus marginatus S.D.? Backeberg clearly regarded the non-columnar plant from near Antotagasta as C. marginata and presumably did not regard Pfeiffer‘s original description ot C. marginata as relating to a plant from Caldera or its vicinity.

In my own collection I have a plant of Copiapoa streptocaulon Kz.72, which came in a joint order direct from Knize in Lima. But Kz.72 was first listed as Copiapoa echinoides; it is so named and illustrated in Dodonaeus 6:6,1968. On a visit to Jumanery nursery in 1976, I found on the staging a selection of C. lembckei which had recently been received from Knize, and among them were two or three specimens that were pretty well an exact match for my Kz.72 Copiapoa streptocaulon, ex-Knize. This probably goes to show that the well-established practice of giving plants the wrong name and the wrong place of origin is not being allowed to fall into disuse.