Curtis’s Botanical Magazine – plate 6061 (vol. 99, 1873), Pelecyphora aselliformis

I have just started my first batch ever of Pelecyphora aselliformis from seed and found this a good opportunity to post on plate 6061 from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine describing this peculiar species.

Curtis's Botanical Magazine has been published continuously since 1787 and is the longest running botanical periodical featuring color illustrations of plants. Below you’ll find what the magazine had to say on Pelecyphora aselliformis back in 1873 along with scans of the original illustration as well as the accompanying descriptive text.

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TAB. 6061.

PELECYPHORA ASELLIFORMIS VAR. CONCOLOR.

Native of Mexico.
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Nat. Ord. CACTEAE.-Tribe ECHINOCACTEAE.

Genus PELECYPHORA, Ehrb.; (Benth. and H. f. Gen. Plant., vol. i. p. 848).
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PELECYPHORA aselliformis; Ehrenberg in Bot. Zeit., vol.i. (1843) p. 737; Walp. Rep., vol. v. p. 822; Salm-Dyck Cact. in Hort. Dyck. cult. 5, et adn. 78; Först. Handb. der Cact. p. 257; Labouret. Monog. Cact. p. 148. Illust. Hortic., vol. vi. t. 186.
VAR. concolor, petalis concoloribus.

This remarkable and still very rare plant, has been long known amongst Cactus growers, and has in fact been in the trade for many years, having been imported by the brothers Tonel from Mexico, where it was said to have been found with the equally anomalous Cactaceous genus Anhalonium, (Ill. Hort., vol. xvi. t. 605 a). It was first published by Ehrenberg, from specimens grown in Berlin in 1843, but nothing was known of its floral character till Lemaire, in 1858, published in the “Illustration Horticole” quoted above, an excellent figure of it with a very full and interesting description.

The specimen here figured was forwarded by Mr. Justus Corderoy of Blewbury, early in June last, with the observation that the flower differs markedly in colour from that of Lemaire’s plant, which has an outer series of pale petals, whereas those of this are uniformly of a rose-purple, like the inner series of Lemaire’s. Though so unlike other Cacti in the sculpturing of the stem and its mammillae, Pelecyphora is not essentially different in these respects from Mammillaria ; the mammillae (which Lemaire regards as abnormal petioles and calls podaria) are vertically oblong, and crowned vertically with two contiguous rows of flat short horny cuspidate processes that overlap horizontally, and resemble the teeth of a comb ; these are analogous to the spines of a Mammillaria, but instead of being free and projecting, they lie flat, and are adnate to the ridge of the mammilla. This double series resembles curiously a wood-louse, with which insects the plant seems covered, and which fact has given it the trivial name of aselliformis.

DESCR. Stem tufted, dark green, shortly cylindric, three to four inches high, one and a half to two inches in diameter, often constricted about the middle, apex rounded. Mammillae spirally arranged, vertical, one third of an inch long, rhomboidal in a tranverse section at the middle, compressed laterally at the crown into a ridge, and contracted to a narrow base, woolly in the axils ; spines minute, short, flat, cartilaginous, linear, oblique, subfalcate, pungent, bifariously arranged on the crest of the mammilla, adnate to its surface with free tips. Flowers clustered towards the top of the stem, one and a half inch in diameter, sessile. Ovary small, naked, oblong, sunk in the axils of the mammillae. Perianth-tube short, free, naked, funnel-shaped ; segments in about four series, obovate-oblong ; acute, rose-purple. Stamens very numerous, inserted in the mouth of the tube, filaments slender, multi-seriate ; anthers minute. Style columnar ; stigmas with four erect lobes.---J D. H.
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Fig. 1, front and 2, side view of a mammilla ; 3, flower laid open:- all magnified.
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OCTOBER 1ST, 1873.

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The scans are courtesy of the Botanicus Digital Library, Missouri Botanical Garden and are free for non-commercial use, as long as attribution is provided.

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Curtis’s Botanical Magazine – plate 4296 (vol. 73, 1847), Lophophora williamsii

Since my early days as a “Lophophora aficionado” I’ve heard and read that the first illustration of Lophophora williamsii appeared in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in 1847 (plate 4296). This fact seems to be very well known – probably because of Anderson’s book Peyote, The Divine Cactus – nevertheless it’s been next to impossible to find a good reproduction of the illustration.

These days are over. The Botanicus Digital Library has scanned the material and made it available online. Below you’ll find copies of the scanned illustration as well as the accompanying description; the description is also reproduced in textual form.

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TAB. 4296.

ECHINOCACTUS WILLIAMSII.

Mr. Williams' Echinocactus.
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Nat. Ord. CACTEAE.- ICOSANDRIA MONOGYNIA.

Gen. Char. (Vide supra, TAB. 4190.)
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ECHINOCACTUS Williamsii ; humilis caespitosus turbinatus inferne teres transversim cicatricatus cinereo-fuscus superne umbilicato-depressus glaucus 6-8-costatus, costis latis convexis parce tuberculatis inermibus pulvilligeris, pulvillis e pilis fasciculatis densis erectis formatis, floribus parvulis subsolitariis albo-roseis.

ECHINOCACTUS Williamsii. “Lemaire, ex Salm-Dyck in Otto et Dietr. Allgem. Gartenzeit, xiii. p. 385.” Walp. Repert. V. 5. p. 816.
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A neatly-formed species, which has a very pretty appearance when its starry blossoms are expanded. We received several plants of it at the Royal Gardens of Kew, through the favour of the Real del Monte Company, from the rocky hills of their district of mines in Mexico, with many other treasures. It flowers in the summer months.

DESCR. Our largest plants do not much exceed the size represented. They grow in a tufted manner and are often proliferous, as in the instance here shown: the parent plant being, as it were, stifled or subdued by its offspring. Each individual is turbinate: from the base to the crown, or summit, terete, of an ashy brown colour, and scarred with close transverse lines, occasioned, it would appear, by the progressive withering and contraction of the tubercles: the summit is broadly convex, but with a deep depression in the centre, glaucous, traversed from the centre outwards by 6-8 furrows, and thus divided into as many convex ridges, and these again, transversely, but more or less deeply, into rather large, rounded, more or less confluent unarmed tubercles, each of which has a dense tuft or short pencil of compact erect hairs:--no aculei. Flowers proceed from a young tubercle, near the centre of the crown. The base of the calyx is downy. The petals lanceolate, rather numerous, white, externally tipped with pale green, and having a rose-coloured line down the centre. Stamens yellow. Stigma of four spreading rays.

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The scans are courtesy of the Botanicus Digital Library, Missouri Botanical Garden and are free for non-commercial use, as long as attribution is provided.

High-resolution copies of the scans can be found in the files section of the Lophophora Google group.

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