Seahorses
Mammillaria compacticaulis
This mature specimen is only 1 1/2″ across. But it blooms up a storm. The flowers vary from pale pink to vibrant pink, with a touch of orange occasionally too. They say they will multiply, but it’s a slow process for these little gems.
These are a good Mammillaria for making undersea succulent terrariums. They are tiny scaled and will look a lot like a piece of coral with a giant pink mouth open to catch seahorses.
In the meantime, I’m sure many of you are jumping up and are ready to tell me this is not M. compacticaulis at all, and you may be right! I don’t know. That’s how the seed stock was labeled, but the photos you see online are, shall we say, varied. Amderson’s The Cactus Family has it listed as a synonym for M. matudae but no photo. I matched it up to the published photos in Cacti: The Illustrated Dictionary by Rod Preston-Mafham. So I am going with this name for now. Tentatively. Except of course once I publish this photo under this name on the Cactus Jungle website, everyone else in the world searching for this plant will decide that this is the plant that is matched up with this name. I have the effect on people, you know. Do I have this effect on you?
