Trichocereus terscheckii. I'll post a pic or two here:



Sorry, forgot to edit the orientation!


My other two specimens from elsewhere and beforehand look less happy than the one from the supermarket. Here is one:



What particular conditions might terscheckii's like?

Great find!

Terscheckiis are some of the first cacti I ordrered. I brewed up one and it turned out to be very active, and decidedly on the stimmy side. I have two others, but I'm not sure I'll ever sacrifice them.

Sweet! They're really beautiful creatures.

I have a somewhat large terscheckii back home, and a few smaller friends. I think I've posted pics of them in the cacti-pron thread. They're actually quite fast growing in the right conditions. I grew mine in the US coastal southwest, so pretty ideal conditions. Not sure how well they do with serious frost and things.

Always need to keep looking in most stores you will find the good stuff someday.
I found my first loph in a store

Thank you all for the replies!


That's good to hear. I'm guessing that may have been a German supermarket? It's very pleasing to hear that they have such potential

I'll definitely keep on looking, that's how I found these recent additions to my cactus collection. I'm always (ALWAYS!) on the lookout for things relevant to my world.

hi Cactus Freaks

I Have had good luck at Home Depot .

A couple years ago I bought a potted two cactus in one pot labeled San Pedro from Altman's nursery for $19 .
One cactus was about 6"x 2.5" the second cactus was about 8"x 3".
I repotted them into a three gallon pot . In the last two years they started growing Monstrose one almost crested . there like about 3 feet tall now .

Also last year at Home Depot I bought a 4" tall cactus labeled
T. Macrogonus .

This fall I bought another potted two cactus in one pot labeled San Pedro from Altman's nursery for $19 .
One cactus was about 8"x 3.5" it looks more like a Peruvians with short spines a little blue, maybe a cross ?
The second cactus was about 11"x 2,5" looks like the usual Altman's pachanoi .

so kepp your eyes peeled at the big box stores

I'm just curious what part of the country (world?) you reside in? The reason I ask, is a lot of people in places like AZ and CA and those warmer areas say they see good trichs in their local big box hardware, but where I'm located, just a little further north, I've never seen anything but T. Grandiflorus in over a decade of scouring every Home Depot/Lowes I go into. Not even a single pc Pachanoi in all that time.

I think it may be more of a locational thing to find the good cacti in big box stores, but I'm kinda curious to gather moar data on the subject. So if anyone has (or has not) seen active Trichocereus in your big box store, chime in, and let's see if we can get a better idea where/how to look for em.

I am in central u.s.a. zone 5 ..
They don't sell cactus for landscaping here, to cold ..ha Its 16f right now ...bbrrrr !
The Cactus are found in the house plant area ..
So they only get a few good cactus... occasionally at places like Lowes , Home Depot in the house plant area of the stores .

The T. Macrogonus I found at Home Depot had stupid pastel paper flowers hot glued to it .

lucky the globs of glue were on some spines , so the cactus was not damaged when I pulled the ridicules paper flowers off of it. DOH !

I live in central Europe. We don't have home depot! But thanks for the input.



You might want to look at T. chiloensis, I've seen a nice picture of these growing out of a snow drift in the high Cordilleras of Chile.
Are they active though? Most probably not.

There's a certain buzz to finding interesting cacti at supermarkets. I also found at the same time what appears to be a Pachycereus pringlei (these are pretty common nowadays), a possible Echinocereus species (which could also turn out to be a T. schickendantzii) and a very lovely Mammilaria - probably a M. elegans but I've temporarily mislaid my best book on globular cacti. I left behind the Echinocactus grusonii and the Ferocactus glaucescens because, while pretty enough, they're a bit boring - and I don't really want more than one specimen of those.

Look up browningia hetzligiana. Altman's is infamous for mislabeling these as T. macrogonus. Beautiful cacti, just not Trichocereus. The distinct marking is a flat line between areoles instead of a v-notch right above.

Sorry to be a debbie downer....

Dreamer, Altman's seems to put out Trichs in waves. Last year was big on the TMP varieties. They're stout, very green, and have distinct lines for v-notches (right in the first picture). They also put out quite a few bridgesii in my area (left in the first picture). Oh, and they just put out a "new" T. peruvianus last year also. Looks like a hybrid between a peruvianus and a pachanoi (not pictured).

In my opinion, the winner winner chicken dinner is the blue one sometimes referred to as "TPQC". (Middle of the middle pot hidden behind the two PC).

Anyway, I'm not sure where to direct you to look for em. They're everywhere here. But this is what they look like:

That last picture is special because there's a TPQC on the left, a PC in the middle, and TPM on the right.

TPQC = a real deal pachanoi, "Trichocereus pachanoi quasi-crest"
TPM = a real deal pachanoi, "trichocereus pachanoi monstrose"

Good info, thanks WAP.

Unfortunately there isn't an Altman's in my area that I know of, but I'll keep an eye out.

Hello bezevo..

I will certainly agree about finding some fantastic cacti at home depot from Altmans.
I have procured many pachanoi from HD in the past years.. nice plants for being a commercialized cactus. I also omce bought a double potted pachanoi pair but one is most definitely a short spine peruvianus variety!

I do have to note thoigh that the "T. macrogonus" that Altman Plants is selling ismt actually macrogonus but instead Browningia hertlingiana... still a lovely cactus to add to the collection but doesnt hold much magic.

Anyways, just had to clarify and add my two cents. Always watch the big box stores... good things always slip through into the market.

Hello Dreamer.. long time no talk..

I am in zone 4 central US and Home Depot is almost always stocking pachanoi pairs... unless i buy them all up.

I also see that WAP already covered the Altmans infamous mislabeling of Browningia hertlingiana as T. macrogonus... sorry i missed that..

The cactus that set off this thread is doing well. It has been gaining height at a greater rate than my labelled terscheckiis, and it is also more slender as well as being a darker, shinier green while lacking the yellow cast and glaucous texture one typically sees with terscheckii. The overall appearance of the spines and areoles is still exceedingly close to the labelled terscheckiis, however.

Hence, after trawling through the (not entirely user-friendly) trichocereus.net species database I'm wondering whether it's more like a werdermannianus, validus or some such - T. validus particularly being a darker green and with sparser spination, it would seem, as seen here (not mine!):



Current pic (2021) of my specimen follows.

I find the identification of terscheckii quite confusing. I saw terscheckiis which looked like yours also labeled as pasacana for example. But I would say pasacana has thinner spines which stand together more dense. I still think yours might be a terscheckii. Werdermanianus has thicker spines which also are more twisted in my opinion. For validus it looks a bit to fat maybe? I dont know.....

Anyways you plant developed great. How tall is it now?

It's about 9" (23cm)tall now and that's getting on for three times the height it was when I bought it four and a half years ago. Girth remains practically the same at roughly 10cm/4".

It was a big boost realising that it could go outdoors quite safely, meaning that last year's growth was quite significant for a terscheckii.

I'll take more exact measurements of it in the morning and we'll see how well it does this summer.

DFZ one of the main characteristics of Terscheckii is the spines. The photos of how the plant looked when you first bought it show spines that are the classic look for the most common form of Terscheckii in cultivation. The areole almost looks like a spider is standing over it, with spines radiating out in a circular pattern and then flaring out. It looks like classic Terscheckii. Any changes to the appearance since then may be due to environmental conditions.

Here's a photo of a Terscheckii that I have for comparison.

Thanks Grey Fox - it was indeed the spine pattern that led me to identify it as a terscheckii in the first place, along with the striped coloration of the spines and the appearance of the hair in the areoles. At the time I had two other specimens to compare it with, although they've always been a bit more yellowish green, have more spines per areole and - now that the supermarket specimen has grown taller - the plants are somewhat stouter overall. These differences are what led me to wonder if it belonged to a different corner of the terscheckii spectrum.

Your specimen looks very similar to the larger specimen I obtained a couple of years back - this time labelled as "Trichocereus pachanoi". The place selling them had dozens of them so I felt obliged to inform them of the error. On returning several months later they still had an appreciable number of the same specimens, all with the same label as before. So I informed them again and this time made sure that they wrote it down

Anyhow, here's how that specimen looks (attached). Very similar to yours, GF - but I wish I could plant it directly into the ground like that as well.

It looks beaitiful! It looks like a Terscheckii to me, but I am not that familiar with the lesser known Terscheckii allies.

I have heard very good things about Validus and Werdermannianus from other collectors. The Terscheckii types are reputed to have very good activity. It seems like there are a small number of collectors out there who really fall in love with this class of Trichocereus. Maybe someone with more knowledge of this type can point out if is Terscheckii or something else.

Yes in the ground a cactus like that could become an amazing specimen. But it would take a very long time. I have seen a few large in ground specimens before. They are very impressive. They grow so slowly that I will probably never sample mine.