Other Trichocereus
How a seal is made
Every plant draws its own mark
Nothing on a seal is decoration. The ring is the plant seen from above, and every mark on it stands for something a grower wrote down about that plant. The mark never carries letters: a name is written out in full beside it, every time.
The mark above belongs to Frankie. Heavy spines. Open that entry and you will find the words behind it printed there.
The anatomy
ticks around the edge = spination
bumps on the ring = rib count
- Bumps.
- One per rib, when a grower gives a count. A range like “five to seven” draws its low end, and the exact wording is on the entry.
- Ticks.
- More of them and longer as the spines get heavier. A plant recorded as spineless gets small dots instead — its areoles are there, its spines are not.
- Centre dot.
- The growing point. Every ring has one.
Growth forms change the ring
columnar
an ordinary ribbed column — almost every Trichocereus
monstrose
lumpy, with growing points wherever it likes
crested
the growing point has stretched into a fan
variegated
two skins at once, so the ring runs two tones
Read from the plant’s own name, its other names and the lines describing its skin, growth and habit — never from a sentence about what its seedlings do.
Color is the species family
- Bridgesii
- Pachanoi
- Peruvianus
- Scopulicola
- Hybrid
- Other Trichocereus
- Other genus
Every seal wears its family’s color, however much has been written down about the plant. The family is written out under every seal as well, so the color is a shortcut and never the only way to read one.
A plain ring has no mark on it.
The mark never replaces the name
There are no initials, codes or monograms on a seal. A ring tells you what a plant is like; only its name tells you which plant it is. So the name is spelled out in full under every tile on the wall and beside the plate on every entry — “Psycho0 × Eileen”, never “P×E”. Every mark on a ring is also printed in words on its entry, so nothing here is an abbreviation you have to learn.