Trichocereus Blog: Zeus - Trichocereus Pachanoi

Zeus – Trichocereus Pachanoi

Parents: unknown. The plant looks very much like an Ecuadorian type of Trichocereus Pachanoi though.

Species: Trichocereus Pachanoi or something between Pachanoi & Peruvianus

Origin of the Plant: The ZEUS clone is a rare clone that´s been slowly introduced into the collections of some SAB members. It´s originally from Egypt and was brought into circulation by the SAB member Philocacti. Approximately 14 years ago, the ZEUS clone was one of the very few Trichocereus species that Philocacti was able to find in Egypt. There aren´t many Trichocereus species around there and this was one of the four Trichocereus species that he came across. The other ones were a Trichocereus taquimbalensis, a Trichocereus Cuzcoensis and a Melted wax version of Trichocereus bridgesii.

In the past years, Philocacti sent a few cuttings to people overseas and now there is a good number of breeders who are actively breeding with it. Though there currently are only very few cuttings available, it´s very likely that we´ll see this plant a lot more in the near future. If you are interested in the ZEUS Trichocereus clone, I´d suggest you to make a posting on the SAB forum or our Trichocereus Facebook Group! You can also try to ask the member Philocacti directly, though I do not know if he currently has any more of them available. There currently are no seeds available of this type, but I will try to get some as soon as anyone of our breeders succeeds in crossing it with some other clones.

Reason for naming the Clone: The ZEUS clone was named after Philocacti´s wonderful dog, who lived with him for 13 years and alwas was his best friend & safe keeper in very hard times. And when I say “hard times”, I really mean that. I guess it´s safe to say that without the emotional support of his dog, Philo might not be here today. I am usually pretty hesistant to name clones, but in this case I feel like it´s totally appropiate to do so because there is a lot of personal history attached to the name. In addition, the plant is a very recognizable Ecuadorian Pachanoi that deserves to be named. Well yeah, I really hope that this clone will become a very widespread one, because there is a lot of positive karma attached to it.

The Zeus clone has some very distinct V-Notches. The color of it´s epidermis changes between a dark green to a very glaucous blue. It usually has very short spines and the older growth can be entirely spiness. I´ll add more info about the measurements as soon as we were able to measure the spines, the distance between the areoles, the diameter of the areoles and the number of spines per areole.

I currently do not know how the flower looks but I´ll add that info later too.