Hi there! I've decided to try my hand with cacti/succulents and picked up this little guy to start with. I haven't been able to identify it as yet, the closest ID I found is a barrel cactus, but it doesn't quite look the same. It's got a really neat little white growth on one side right under the flower that looks like a rock, and even the flower is quite rigid and sharp. Sorry about the blurry pics, I was trying to get as close up as I could. Thanks for your help....again!! Shannon
White growth? That cannot be. A small stone trapped under a spine? The flowers are fake flowers, glued or pinned to the body.Try to remove them without hurting the cactus. I think it is a kind of Ferocactus, maybe a histrix but the pictures are not sharp enough for a reliable ID (except for a Ferocactus expert, perhaps). The plant is young too, it is more difficult to identify them when they are small.
Hi, and thanks for your help. You can actually see the white growth in one two of the pictures, right beneath the quite real flowers. I checked before purchasing and again now, its an actual bloom on the plant. I'll try to post some clearer pictures, thanks again for your reply. :)
Ferocactus usually do not flower when small (how big is yours, by the way?), and the flowers look strange. How long have they looked as in the pictures? Yes, I can see a white blob, but I cannot figure out what it is. Cactus growth is not white unless there is something terribly wrong with the plant.
Hi again! I just recently purchased it and the flowers are beginning to open up a bit more but haven't changed other then that. There were two of those white growths, I knocked one off accidently while moving it. They look almost like tiny pebbles, its kind of strange lol. The one that fell off was literally as hard as a rock but had a little dent in it where it was against the plant. Hopefully I didn't pick a sick one to start off with!!
Bigger than I first thought, but I still have doubts. Some types of fake flowers open and close like almost like real flowers, but I don't remember how this works. Flowers usually do not last for more than 2-4 days on this type of cactus, so it will be easy to find out whether these are real or not.
I would say Ferocactus histrix as well. I don't know how old they need to be to bloom, but from those pix, I would have also said it was a fake flower! :D Here's the youngest blooming plant pic I could find: http://fichas.infojardin.com/cactus/ferocactus-histrix.htm Does your flower(s) have stamen?
