T h e Cactus Explorer

1 Cactus ExplorerThe first free on-line Journal for Cactus and Succulent EnthusiastsTheObregonia denegriiUebelmannia eriocactoides Echeveria pendulifloraGasteria rawlinsoniiMammillaria luethyiNumber 3 ISSN 2048-0482 February 2012 Cover Picture: Mammillaria , possibly several plants or a small the article on Page 30. Photo: Paul : The Cactus Explorers Club, Briars Bank, Fosters Bridge, Ketton, Stamford, PE9 3BF Exploreris available as a free PDF file downloadable from Editorial Team:Organiser: Graham Charles Adviser: Roy Mottram Hoxey Janeba Lowry expressed in the articles are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of the editorial of the Cactus Explorermay be freely distributed whilst the copyright of the text and pictures remainswith the authors.

2 Permission is required for any use of this material other than reading, printing or to ContributorsPlease consider the Cactus Exploreras the place to publish your articles. We welcome contributionsfor any of the regular features or a longer article with pictures on any aspect of cacti andsucculents. The editorial team is happy to help you with preparing your work. Please send yoursubmissions as plain text in a Word document together with separate jpeg or tiff images withthe maximum resolution available, at least 1200 x 800 pixels. A major advantage of this on-line format is the possibility of publishing contributions quicklyand any issue is never full! We aim to publish your article within 3 months and the copy deadlineis just a few days before the publication date which is planned for the 10th of February, May,August and November.

3 Please note that advertising and links are freeand provided for thebenefit of readers. Adverts are placed at the discretion of the editorial team, based on theirrelevance to the Cactus Explorer ISSN 2048-0482 Number 3 February 20122 Regular FeaturesIntroduction3 News and Events4 Thank you John (Pilbeam)8 Recent New Descriptions13 Lophophora alberto-vojtechii16In the Glasshouse18 Journal Roundup22 The Love of Books24 Society Page64 Retail Therapy65 ArticlesGasteria rawlinsonii in the Baviaanskloof26 Mammillaria luethyi. In search of a botanical jewel from Mexico30My search for Obregonia denegrii37 Melocactus on two Caribbean Islands43 Why Echeveria penduliflora?47 Travel with the Cactus expert (2)50 Uebelmannia pectinifera var.

4 Eriocactoides54 Expedition to Socotra, 196758 InthIsEdItIonThe source for on-line information about cacti and succulents is link for Gymnocalycium enthusiasts (French): issue published onFebruary 10th 2012 Number 3 February 2012 ISSN 2048-0482 The Cactus Explorer3 What a welcome!It is most pleasing that you are continuing toemail me and tell me how much you areenjoying the Cactus Explorer . We reallyappreciate hearing from you, it is veryencouraging to know that our efforts areappreciated!I would particularly like to thank the authorswho have contributed articles. Without anychasing from me, we had plenty of material forthe last issue. In fact, it ended up being ratherlarger than I had planned. But, unlike printedjournals, we can vary the size to accommodatewhat we have ready to publish.

5 It was a bitscary to have nothing in hand when number 2was published, but I need not have beenconcerned as you can see from this issue!The files are actually created in a way whichwould allow printed versions of the journal tobe produced to a good quality, although thelinks would, of course, be superfluous. I amaware that many potential readers may not beable to access the online version, hence thepotential to produce print copies. The problemis that the small numbers of copies wouldmake printed copies expensive. I suggest thatwhen the first 4 issues are available, I shallinvestigate the cost of a printed and boundcompendium volume. The high resolution filescould also be sold on a CD ready to be printedif desired.

6 Your views would be know that many of you pass the pdf files (orprinted versions) on to others, an activity weencourage. The more readers the better! Itappears that we now have thousands ofreaders worldwide so I am rather surprisedthat I have not had more response to my offerof freeadverts. I would particularly like moreamateurs to advertise their spare plants orrequests for plants they are looking for. Thepropagation of rare plants in cultivation is avaluable conservation activity which should me, propagation is one of the mostrewarding aspects of cultivation, whether byseeds or cuttings. It is a practical activity whichcan help to reduce the demand for illegally-collected habitat plants by making desirablespecies available at reasonable prices.

7 And forthe propagator, any help with the cost ofheating etc. must be welcome! I have repeatedthe links to seed sellers in this is not much news at this time of theyear but we would welcome organisers ofevents to tell us about what they are planningso that we can promote their events to is a pleasure to present an article about thedigital library hosted by whichis primarily a French language site but there isplenty of material in English and otherlanguages. It is a very valuable resource forlooking up references in rare books and theywould welcome your help in adding to am keen to include articles about the othersucculents, so the three in this issue are verywelcome. We also have a couple of articlesabout searching for cacti in Mexico and acelebration of one of Britain s favouriteauthors, John Pilbeam.

8 The editorial team hope you enjoy and wish you a successful year with yourplant activities. Be sure to tell your friendsabout the Cactus Explorer . I often get mailsfrom people who have only just found it!GrahamCharlesIntroduCtIonThe next issue of the Cactus Explorerisplanned for May 2012. If you have not al-ready told me and would like to be advisedwhen it is available for download, pleasesend meyour E-mail address to be added tothe distribution list. Thank you for your interest and support!This digital library is freely accessible all started in November 2006 with a goal toprovide you with entire books related to cactiand other succulents on the internet. Later weadded other type of documents like reviews,extracts from general publications, periodicalarticles, These documents rangein length from a few pages for the smallest tomore than 2,000 pages for the largest (thecomplete list is available on our web site) andwe continue to extend the library.

9 In this articlewe present the objectives of this project, itshistory, its technical operation and aprovisional balance. It is also an opportunityfor us to recruit potential ProjectMany publications have been written on cactiand other succulents. The first ones date backto almost three centuries ago. The frequency ofpublications has continually accelerated andnew works, either general or more specialized,are published every year. Our project aims toprovide access to these publications(particularly those that may not be accessibleelsewhere, being too old or not availableanymore) by providing them in digital format,mostly as PDF files available for downloadingby the user. In order to be made available onour website, a publication should have falleninto the public domain or an authorization hasbeen obtained from the author and library contains rare publications, someof them cannot be found anywhere else!

10 Bymid-2011, the content reached about 31,000pages (as far as navigation pages areconcerned, not scanned publications) (_O filesare not counted see the next paragraph), formore than 280 documents. The library isavailable in four languages: French, English,Italian and Technical ExplanationsThe publications are mainly in PDF format(but sometimes they come in HTML, RTF orTXT formats), available for free download. Thefiles which are still under copyright protectionare only for private, personal and non-commercial use and may be subject to specificuse conditions. Public domain files arecompletely free of restrictions and can be usedfor any PDF files can be read by any PDF-compliant software like Acrobat Reader, FoxitPDF Reader, Kpdf, are available in two additionalformats: Original file ( ): this is a rawdigital copy made up of scanned images of theoriginals.