Cactus Explorers Journal - The Cactus Explorers Club

The Cactus Explorer ISSN 2048-0482 Number 4 May 2012
Fig.6 Four young plants of Lobivia kuehhasii GC409.01
It was nine years later in 2009 that Walter
Rausch published two new Lobivia names in
the German journal KuaS, one of them, Lobivia
kuehhasii is clearly the plant we saw in the
Sierra Famatina and from near where we saw
it.
The type collection WR817b was made in
1990 and in the WR field number list I have
from 2008, it has the name Acanthocalycium
thionanthum var. australis. I am not convinced
that it is a separate species and I feel that a
subspecies of E. thionantha would be more
appropriate, bearing in mind its geographic
disjunction.
You may be wondering when I will tell you
about the Maihueniopsis! Well, it was our next
stop at 2755m. There was some gently-sloping
land (Fig.1) with a track leading down the
slope from the road to a small building. We
parked by the building where we could look
down into a dramatic gorge with a river at the
bottom (Fig.8). The water was an ochre colour
which looked as if it originated from the soft
rocks of the ravine.
We looked around and I was interested to see
a plant that looked like a small Echinopsis
(Lobivia) formosa but already flowering when
less than 15cm in diameter (Fig. 9). Nearby we
had seen the normal form of the plant,
growing to a large size and becoming short
columnar. I concluded that this miniature form
was the plant described by Rausch (1979) as
Lobivia rosarioana, a name he later made a
variety of Lobivia formosa. He tells us that the
plant is rarely found in the Sierra Famatina.
10
Fig.7 Seedling of Lobivia kuehhasii GC409.01. 8cm pot.
Fig.8 The ravine with the ochre-coloured river.
Fig.9 Lobivia formosa rosarioana A small-growing form
which flowers when only about 10cm in diameter.