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Bridge Kai seal. monstrose growth.

Bridgesii

Bridge Kai

Well documented

Also written as Kai, Kia

Bridge Kai, usually just Kai, is an Australian linked to Shaman Australis Botanicals and listed in a published Australian classic-clone catalogue. A mutation of it is also in cultivation. Detail is thin: the wiki page gives no count or spine measurements, describing only green and prominent spines.Reported, but not confirmed.

  • glaucous green
  • variegated form exists
  • rib shifting
  • long spines
  • spines pale with age
  • semi-monstrose

BridgesiiNamed clone: One original plant and every cutting taken from it, given a name by a grower.

Of the 23 things this page says, 1 is something several independent sources agree on, 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 bridgesii

syn. Echinopsis lageniformis

Filed under Bridgesii

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

The clone comes from Australia.

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 Bridge Kai. 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

It is closely tied to Shaman Australis Botanicals.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

It is listed in a published Australian classic-clone catalogue.Reported, but not confirmed.

One grower reports keeping a variegated mutation of it.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Species, as our sources record it: Australian Trichocereus bridgesii.

The is Australian.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Two accounts of how it entered the trade compete: through the now-closed Magickal Botanicals, or through Shaman Australis Botanicals.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

A variegated sport of it is reported to be circulating in Australia.Reported, but not confirmed.

European nurseries, Haage Kakteen among them, have reportedly offered hybrids of it.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Kia is an Australian Bolivian torch with a habit of changing its mind: it shifts rib count as it grows and can drift in and out of lumpy, semi-monstrose growth. Spines start brown and long, then pale as they age, over skin that runs green to blue-grey. Accounts differ on which nursery introduced it, the name is written both Kia and Kai, and a variegated sport is reported in Australian collections.Reported, but not confirmed.

Where the name comes from

The clone comes from Australia.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.

  • Not documented yet.

  • Not documented yet.

Skin
Glaucous green, following the general bridgesii pattern.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Glaucous green stems are typical of bridgesii and its clones.
Spines
Described only as prominent; no lengths or colours are recorded.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Notes
A variegated form of the clone exists in cultivation.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.Skin sits somewhere between green and blue-grey.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Green to blue-grey skin is the normal colour range for the genus.It shifts rib count as it grows.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Rib number commonly changes as a Trichocereus column matures.Spines come in long and brown, then pale toward white as they age.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Spines darkening at emergence and fading paler with age is normal behaviour in this genus.Growth can turn semi-monstrose, lumpy and irregular in places and columnar in others.Reported, but not confirmed.

What the sources say

The wiki page is bot-compiled and not editor-verified, and one contributor hedges by wondering whether more than one Kai exists.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.The community wiki files "Bridge Kai" and "Kia" as separate pages, and the names fold together. We keep them apart because no source states they are the same plant.Reported by one source, and not corroborated anywhere else.Which nursery introduced it is unsettled, with two different sources named.Reported, but not confirmed.The name is written both Kia and Kai.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.Said plainly, because the library does something its own record declined to do: the two headings fold together under the name matching this site uses, so Kai is carried here as an alias of this entry. Nothing states that they are the same plant, and the species is the same either way.Reported, but not confirmed.

Drawing of a bridgesii-type column: slim, with few ribs, areoles set widely apart and long needle spines.
A Bridgesii column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Bridgesii. 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.