ANCISTROCACTUS. 5 
mm. long or less, white to straw-colored; central spines 3 or 4, the lowest one strongly hooked; 
flowers small, 2.5 cm. long, greenish yellow; ovary small, nearly naked; seeds large (about 2 mm, 
long), brown and minutely tuberculate (according to Coulter). 
Type locality: Not cited. 
Distribution: Southern Texas and northern Mexico. 
It is probable that this species is based on Potts’s specimen from Chihuahua and, if 
so, may be a different species from the one described by Engelmann, which he said was 
“‘a most elegant little species, one and a half to two inches high; larger spines black and 
white variegated.” We have not seen Potts’s plant, but it was referred here by Hemsley. 
Illustrations: Cact. Mex. Bound. pl. 17; Riimpler, Sukkulenten f. 105; Cact. Journ. 
1: pl. for March; Schelle, Handb. Kakteenk. 156. f. 84, as Echinocactus scheeri. 
Plate 11, figure 2, shows a plant collected by Dr. Rose at Laredo, Texas, in 1913, which 
flowered in the New York Botanical Garden in 1914. Text-figure 2 is from a photograph 
taken by Robert Runyon of a plant collected in 1921 near Brownsville, Texas. 
Fic. 2.—Ancistrocactus scheeri. Fic. 3.—Ancistrocactus brevihamatus. 
3. Ancistrocactus brevihamatus (Engelmann). 
Echinocactus brevihamatus Engelmann, Proc. Amer. Acad. 3: 271. 1856. 
Echinocactus scheert brevihamatus Weber in Schumann, Gesamtb. Kakteen 336. 1898. 
Globular to obovoid, 5 to 10 cm. high, 5 to 7.5 cm. in diameter, dark green; ribs usually 13, 
compressed, strongly tubercled; tubercles grooved on upper side from spine-cluster to base, the 
groove woolly; radial spines 10 to 14, terete, white, 10 to 20 mm. long; central spines 4, the lower 
one porrect, hooked at apex; flowers rose-colored, 25 to 32 mm. long, not so broad as long; inner 
perianth-segments 15 mm. long, 4 mm. broad; mid-rib darker colored than margins; fruit about 1.5 
cm. long, thin-walled, nearly naked; seeds brownish black, about 2 mm. long, smooth or with low 
flattened papillae, with a deep-set basal hilum. , 
Type locality: On the San Pedros, Texas. 
Distribution: Southern Texas. 
Illustrations: Haage and Schmidt, Haupt-Verz. Cact. 1908: 226; Schelle, Handb. 
Kakteenk. 157. f. 85, as Echinocactus scheert brevihamatus; Cact. Mex. Bound. pl. 18, 19; 
Ann. Rep. Smiths. Inst. 1908: pl. 3, f. 3; Forster, Handb. Cact. ed. 2. 516. f. 64; Riimpler, 
Sukkulenten 186. f. 104; Blanc, Cacti 41. No. 414; Engler and Prantl, Pflanzenfam. 3°: 
162. f. 56, c, as Echinocactus brevihamatus. 
Text-figure 3 is a reproduction of plate 18 of the Cactaceae of the Mexican Boundary 
Survey. 
