Home | E-mail | Plant files | Mail Sale Catalogue | Links | Information | Search

All the information and photos in cactus art files are now available also in the new the Enciclopedia of Cacti. We hope you find this new site informative and useful.

 

Pediocactus sileri
(Syn: Sclerocactus sileri, Utahia sileri)

CACTUS ART
NURSERY

Cultivation and Mail Sale
of Cacti and Succulents.


Plant from Fort Pearce Wash, 800m. Utah, USA

 

Photo gallery: Alphabetical listing of Cactus and Succulent pictures published in this site.

Photo gallery PEDIOCACTUS


Advertising



 

Family: Cactaceae (Cactus Family)
 

Scientific name:  Pediocactus sileri (Engelmann) L. Benson
Cact. & Succt. J. (US) 33:53, 1961.

Origin & Habitat:  Northwestern Arizona and southwestern Utah. Currently, this cactus sparsely populates a narrow band stretching from southeast of Fredonia (Coconino County) west into north-central Mohave County, Arizona, a distance of 100 Km. This band is only 50 km wide, and as of the mid 1980's, contains about only 7,000 individual plants of the species. It grow on a highly specific soil type the gypsum- and calcium-rich soils of barren rolling hills.

Conservation status: Listed in CITES appendix 1.

Common Names include: Gypsum cactus, Siler pincushionon cactus, Gypsum plains cactus, silver pincushion cactus    

 Silver's pincushion cactus

Synonyms:  
  • Utahia sileri (Engelmann) Britton & Rose,
    Cactaceae, 3:215, 1922.
  • Echinocactus sileri (basionym) Engelmann ex J.M. Coult.
    Published in: Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 3(7): 376. 1896. {Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. ; BPH 331.05} Type - protologue Siler s.n. [in 1883] (HT: MO)

Type: collected in May 1883 by Siler, MO (2 sheets); photograph, ny.

Description: P. sileri is a tiny plant measuring up to 10 centimeters in diameter. It is a very rare cactus and most difficult to grow on its own roots. It is better to graft it on a suitable grafting stock. During the spring, bright yellowish flowers about 2.5 centimeters in diameter will bloom and produce greenish yellow fruit. Its straight or slightly curved spines are about 2.5 centimeters  long, are white and brownish which lighten to a white colour with age. It usually does not cluster.

 

 


Photo of conspecific taxa, varieties, forms and cultivars of
Pediocactus silerii.

 



 

  Disambiguation notes courteously provided by
Mr. Dorde W. Woodruff, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
   
    I'm writing about your webpages on Pediocactus sileri.

The fact that Mr Siler of Southern Utah was the first to collect both Pediocactus sileri and Sclerocactus sileri, different species, in the 1800s, is a cause of some confusion. Not only are they confused on your webpages, but also on others....
  
...The only synonyms for Pediocactus sileri, apparently, are Utahia sileri and Echinocactus sileri. This cactus is quite distinctive, larger and coarser than some of the other Pediocacti. The dark spines and the wooly areoles are distinctive even on an herbarium sheet. And it only grows on that peculiar badlands clay soil, farther west than Sclerocactus sileri....

....Sclerocactus sileri is a different case, harder to distinguish when not blooming from the other small Sclerocacti, because it's not so different-looking. That's probably why it has had several other names. Being so isolated, it probably does deserve its own name...

...Sclerocactus sileri grows to the east of Pediocactus sileri, in red sandy soil. It's a smaller plant, and scattered, as the small species of Sclerocactus tend to be, though it has more locations than we knew of in the 60s, when I first found it...

...As noted in the online version of The Flora of North America,
 http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242415294 , Ken Heil and Mark Porter claim that there is no support for this species being placed in either S. pubispinus or S. whipplei....
   
         
Home | E-mail | Plant files | Mail Sale Catalogue | Links | Information | Search

All the information and photos in cactus art files are now available also in the new the Enciclopedia of Cacti. We hope you find this new site informative and useful.