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Thelocactus is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae. Members of the genus are native to the arid lands of Central and Northern Mexico.
Thelocactus species are generally easy to cultivate, even if many species fail to flower until they are five years old. Soils should be composed of equal proportions of sand and humus. Water normally from Spring to Autumn. In Winter, keep most species at a minimum temperature of 8 °C. They can survive at lower temperatures but the roots then must be kept dry. The dark brown or black seeds can be relatively large for the size of cactus and they germinate readily.
Reproduction is nearly always from seed, since the plant rarely produces plantlets. The seed should be put in a sand and compost mixture, kept moist, maintained at a temperature of 21 °C and placed in a shady position.
Thelocactus species grow in the wild in central and North Mexico and in the US in Texas. In Mexico, the species are generally concentrated along and to the west of the Sierra Madre Oriental beginning with T. hastifer in Querétaro State, about 150 km NNW of Mexico City. One subspecies (T. bicolor ssp. flavidispinus) grows on the other (northern) side of the Rio Grande, well distributed in the Big Bend area of Texas. Other occurrences of T. bicolor in Texas have been reported but cited verification is sketchy although it would be odd if they did not occur there. Some species are distributed over a wide area of many Mexican states (T. bicolor and its subspecies and T. hexaedrophorus) with T. bicolor and its current (2013) botanically accepted subspecies bolaensis, flavidispinus, heterochromus and schwarzii having the widest distribution. In contrast, one species, T. lausseri, only occurs in one known remote locality in central Coahuila state. Species are distributed in mountainous stony/rocky places or grassy territory with clay soil.
Glory of Texas · Thelocactus buekii · Thelocactus conothelos · Thelocactus hastifer · Thelocactus hexaedrophorus · Thelocactus lausseri · Thelocactus leucacanthus · Thelocactus macdowellii · Thelocactus multicephalus · Thelocactus rinconensis · Miniature barrel cactus · Thelocactus tepelmemensis
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Thelocactus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
