one on the many errors attributed to this author. This species originates in Mexico and all the 

 observations of species from far away, are in my opinion a mistake. The great majority of the 

 Aulacothele originate in the northern provinces, whereas the Eumammillaria are mainly found in the 

 south. 



Now, after I have told you which the genders are that I would like to include in our first section 

 (Gymnocarpus) and which the characteristics are that seem to differentiate them, I must talk to you 

 about a plant that you undoubtedly know better than I that is without doubt a part of our first section. I 

 do not under what gender to place. This plant, of which I would like to get your opinion is the 



Mammillaria micromeris. 



I found in the arrid and stony plains, close to Saltillo on the edges of the road from Saltillo to 

 Monterrey, some rare forms of this plant that you have described under the name of M Micromeris var. 

 Greggi. I was unable to preserve any specimen. They all died before arriving in France. Therefore I am 

 unable to examin them again and all what I teil comes from my notes. I will copy what 1 find in my 

 notebooks, relative to this plant. 



Globular, simple, sometimes with polycephalic branches and with a destroyed head. The largest sample 

 that I was able to find measures four cms. in diameter and in height. It is entirely similar to the 

 description of the M. Micromeris var. Greggi given by Englemann in the Bound. Comm. Rep. The best 

 samples have no flowers (Nov. 1861, but the ripe fruits are in the middle of the wool on the summit. I 

 carefully dissected 2 samples and I was convinced that this plant is certainly vertical like in the 

 connifera and the like. The Vertex is mainly depressed and fiiled by the cephalium that surrounds the 

 plant. It also has abundant woolen down which is very long and forms part of the needles. This type of 

 Cephalium is unique for this species. I was reasurred in the most positive way, with a careful dissection 

 using a magnifying glass, that the flowers and the fruits arise from the summit of the young mammillae 

 and not from the axila, that are entirely bare throughout their existence. The fruits that I examined arose 

 from the upper part of the occulipherous areola immediately beneath the silk threads of the needles. 

 Late on, on the perfectly developed mammillae there is no trace, scar, groove of the areola or of the 

 place where the flower had been. 



The bark and the seeds are identical to those seen in the pl ants of the Bound Commission Report. The 

 seeds are scaphoid (of umbilical configuration. I only found this shape of seeds in one Single species of 

 the Echinocactus capricornis, that is found not far from Rinconada. 



In what gender does this unusual species find itself? It is surely not the Eumammillaria that is essentially 

 characterized by the infloresecence, always axillary, in which all the flowers are ordinarily lateral, 

 sometimes subcentral (that is to say growing out of the grooves of the adult mammillae, from the same 

 year but never arising from the new born mammillae. Could this be the Aulacothele? 

 Therefore the essential characteristic on which I want to found this gender (flowers Coming out of the 

 end of the groove that prolong the occulipheros areola of the upper mammillae), would be wrong or 

 would it be necessary to modify and admit that one section in which a groove of flowers is so short, 

 nearly nil therefore the inflorescense would be completely areolar.???? 



