Mammillaria senilis

[Tina]

Do you think they want a bit more water ?

[rcapra]

just to share the wonder of these flowers ... even the pollen falls back like in the beautiful Alì Baba plant. I continue to love Mammillarias even if they seem out of date now.

[Ali Baba]

They are truly special flowers. In my experience, flowering is linked to a period of cold (around 5 degrees Celsius). The years when I didn't have a cold December and January, I didn't have flowers. Another important point in my plants is a decent growth in the previous year (if it struggles, it does not bloom the following spring). In short, it does not seem to me an always complacent plant. Ruggero

Cold isn’t a factor in my experience as I have previously posted; my greenhouse minimum is now around 8-9C and was previously at 6C, and I am still getting flowers. There may be clones about that require cold to flower of course, but I would suggest it is more about light levels especially as mine really only produces flowers on the sunny side. I’m lucky enough to have a greenhouse that gets unobstructed light for almost the whole day even in winter. And of course a cold frosty winter usually means a fair bit of winter sunshine

[iann]

I have lots of buds this year, red and white. It hasn't been a cold winter, but the plants are in an unheated greenhouse and have been below freezing a number of times.

[Diane]

As promised earlier, here are my two which flowered in the last week or two.

The first is one of my oldest plants, must be over 40 years old, and in a 6” pot. I thought I was going to lose it a few years ago, as growth had checked and it hadn’t flowered, but it appears to have recovered, and has flowered this year:

Mammillaria senilis

The second one I grew from seed and labelled M. diguetii, which just seems to be a varietal form, and almost no difference although the flowers are a little more scarlet:

Mammillaria senilis V. diguetii