Topic 1:

    Backeberg's clone & why it is mythology


       I unfortunately have helped to widely propagate this mistake (now urban legend) in print by including it in my books Sacred Cacti and San Pedro.
       What most people refer to as Backeberg's clone is the predominate cactus sold as Trichocereus pachanoi in US horticulture.
       You have all no doubt seen many thousands of feet of it growing in countless people's gardens in multiple states.
       It is even featured in the center of the cover of the Trout's Notes book San Pedro which has an entire section of photographs more or less devoted to it.
       While the search is still ongoing and far from complete, thusfar we can find no proof that this plant is known from the wild.

       Just to be sure that our subject is clear, here is an example or three (all are in California):



    And a close-up of a fairly typical tip.



    And of a fairly typical areole.



    And another picture showing a flowering plant.




    This on the other hand is Backeberg's photo of a bona fide Trichocereus pachanoi taken from his 1959 Die Cactaceae:



       The differences are both subtle and not so subtle.

       Whatever the pachanot turns out to be it is clearly not the same creature that Backeberg shows here. For those not yet convinced please bear with me and check out some more images of bona fide pachanoi.


       This next image is a bona fide pachanoi growing in shaman's garden near Cuzco, Peru (Photo copyright Geneva Photography)
       Notice how nicely this matches Backeberg's photo and how different it is from the predominate cultivar in the USA?



       This image will reappear with more comments elsewhere here but we wanted to have a copy here for comparison with the other images.


    This is a close-up of a tip of a Peruvian pachanoi (the shininess is due to this tip cutting having been handled excessively).



    For more of the same through an unrelated source.

    For a closer view of more of the same from yet another unrelated source.


    Another view of another bona fide Trichocereus pachanoi in Peru.



    Both photographs above are copyright Grizzly.


    Just to be sure that no one forgets that pachanoi can be variably spiny.




       We will explore this subject in more detail but we could summarize this by saying that the plant now mistakenly called Backeberg's clone (namely our pachanot) is not the same plant Backeberg recognized as pachanoi at Huancabamba and claims to have brought into horticulture in Germany in 1931.
       We have some questions about this latter claim as well as it appears that pachanoi may already have been in horticulture in the US either by or before 1930 and we have not yet been able to determine that anyone preserved knowledge of which European pachanoi might have come from Backeberg.


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    All photographs © copyright by their photographers.
    Photos are by Keeper Trout except where indicated otherwise.