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Brians Blue Skies seal. short spines recorded.

Pachanoi

Brians Blue Skies

Well documented

Also written as BBS, JS444, Poot's Pachanoi

Brians Blue Skies is a nursery from Poots Cactus Nursery in Ripon, California, named for Brian Poot, whose father started the business. It puts a heavy powdery blue-grey on thick columns with very short spines, and growers in humid states rate it as unusually disease resistant. The same plant is catalogued by Cactus Affinity as JS444, and growers still disagree over whether to call it a short-spined or a pachanoi-peruvianus hybrid.Reported, but not confirmed.

  • powdery blue farina
  • thick columns
  • very short spines
  • disease resistant
  • deep green
  • short spines

PachanoiNursery selection: A selection a nursery or seed house put a name on and sold.

Of the 22 things this page says, 5 name who reports them and 17 are marked as something we cannot confirm. Where a line is not settled, it says so underneath.

Added 23 Aug 2026

At a glance

Species

Trichocereus pachanoi

syn. Echinopsis pachanoi

Filed under Pachanoi

Parents

Not recorded

No source names a mother or a father for this one.

Origin

Named for Brian of Poots Cactus Nursery when a cutting was bought by the proprietor of Cactus Affinity.

no source says whether it is seed-grown or a cutting line

In the yard

Not in the yardAsk if you are after one

Family line

what the record holds

No source in this library records a cross for Brians Blue Skies. Nobody names a mother or a father for it, and no other entry here names it as a parent.

That is the record, not an oversight: of the 749 names in this library, 693 have no recorded relation either. Most named clones were selected, cut and passed along without anyone writing down what they came out of. A parent goes in here when a source states it and never because a name looks like one — a wrong pedigree would travel further than a blank one, because pedigrees get copied.

If you know where it came from, tell us — a person reads everything before it appears.

The longer version

Its mother stand grows on the nursery site, screened by a fence and two sheds on the eastern edge of the main sales area.Reported, but not confirmed.

Bill Poot founded the nursery out of a general love of cacti, and Poot's son Brian brought the interest in ; the clone carries Brian's name.Reported, but not confirmed.

The name was given when the owner of Cactus Affinity bought a from Brian.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Cactus Affinity files the same plant under its own code, JS444.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The clone is tied to Poots Cactus Nursery.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Large cuttings in circulation are traced back to Jeff Waters.Reported, but not confirmed.

The wiki page notes the nursery also puts out other material, and that one of its names is a joke that may stick.Reported, but not confirmed.

A Californian nursery sells the clone under both names at once, records that its own cutting was bought from the grower the plant is named after, and names the same family nursery the wiki page does. Until now both the Poot's origin and the claim that BBS and JS444 are one plant rested on the community wiki alone.Reported by 2 independent sources; we have not seen it ourselves.

Where the name comes from

The clone is sold by Poots Cactus Nursery in Ripon, California.Reported, but not confirmed.

Character

A bar is drawn only where one of the lines below states it — never from the species, never from a photograph.

  • Not documented yet.

  • nearly smooth to heavily spined: this one leans towards nearly smooth, read from the spines line below.

  • Not documented yet.

Skin
New growth carries an intense powdery blue-grey farina, strongest in filtered light.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Spines
Very short and understated.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Very short, unobtrusive spination sits comfortably in the range the genus shows.
Growth habit
Thick, robust columns.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Thick, robust columnar stems are typical of the genus and nothing here conflicts.
Notes
Growers in wet, humid places such as Florida praise its disease resistance.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.Deep green , sometimes with a light bloom.Reported, but not confirmed.Ribs are well defined, small, and spines short enough to be easy to miss.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Well-defined ribs with small areoles and very short spines is a consistent, commonly seen combination.In mild climates it tends to flower in early spring, around March or April.Reported, but not confirmed.Breeders like it as a partner, with Landfill and Ogun named as targets.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

The wiki page records mild ongoing debate about the species: most often a short-spined pachanoi, sometimes a pachanoi/peruvianus hybrid. The same plant is catalogued under a second name, JS444, which has its own wiki entry.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.The two wiki pages describe the same plant differently: one gives an intense powdery blue-grey farina, the other deep green skin with at most a light bloom. Both descriptions are kept above.Reported, but not confirmed.

Drawing of a pachanoi-type column: broad, with low rounded ribs, almost no spines, and a small notch in the rib above each areole.
A Pachanoi column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Pachanoi. The better-documented ones come first.

Keep exploring

Cultivar histories in this hobby are passed between growers; where sources disagree we say so rather than pick a side.