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are a bit bigger with yellow flowers in rings round the top. There isn't much to choose between the species.
Gymnocalycium is sometimes considered to include Weingartia. They're typically wider than high with a few wide ribs and white or pink flowers from the top. G. brushii is the smallest species and looks more like a Sulcorebutia except that it's pink flowers are produced from the top. G. baldianum has pink or dark red flowers. In garden centres you will often see three sided green cacti with round, bright red tops. These are grafted cacti. The stock (bottom part) is Hylocereus (which is very sensitive to cold) and the scion (top part) is a chlorotic (lacking chlorophyll) cultivar of Gymnocalycium freidrichii, which can't photosynthesize so it has to be grafted. The normal G. freidrichii is purplish brown and grows perfectly well on its own roots. Due to their small size, you can afford to collect lots of Gymnocalyciums.
The tribe Notocactinae is also a bit of a mess with regard to classification. The genus Notocactus are typically small, easily grown cacti with large yellow flowers with red stigmas but they're now sometimes lumped into Parodia. N. uebelmannianus is noteworthy for it's purple flowers. N. leninhausii has clumps cylindrical stems, with oddly sloping tops, to about 1m high, covered in yellow spines. N. magnifica has grey stems with yellow spines and also grows quiet large.
Parodia is more varied and generally harder to grow than Notocactus but most have beautiful flowers.
Frailea are very small cacti, which tend to produce viable seeds without opening their flowers. F. pygmea is round with weak, pectinate spines and F. magnifica looks like a very small N. leninghausii.
Chile is home to two genera (some would say more) of interesting, globular cacti. Copiapoa are varied from very small to bowling ball sized (sometimes forming clumps) and they all have yellow flowers. It's probably best to get the smaller species like C. hypogea or C. humilis.
Neoporteria is very varied, often with curved spines and brownish stems. It used to include plants with smallish flowers with somewhat incurved petals but now it includes a number of plants with larger pastel coloured flowers (formally included in Neochilenia). There are a lot of interesting plants to collect in this genus but some can get large and they're a bit more temperamental than the Trichocerinae.
Matucana is an odd genus, sometimes included in Borzicactus (mostly large, cylindrical cacti). They have
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Recently, I showed a friend a small cactus with a flower on it and she asked, "What sort of flower is it?" I explained that
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