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Colossus seal. Plain ring: nothing here sets a rib count, a spine length or a growth form the ring can mark.

Other Trichocereus

Colossus

Well documented

Also written as Collosus

Colossus is a cautionary tale about names. At least three different use it: the plant documented by the researcher Keeper Trout, a line grown from open-pollinated seed taken off the Colossus at the Berkeley Botanical Garden, and a third distributed through the Misplant seed bank whose identity is unconfirmed. The Berkeley history is murky in its own right, since the original 1966 accession is recorded as dead and the plant standing there now may be a chance hybrid. No single description of ribs, spines or can honestly be given for the name.Reported, but not confirmed.

Other TrichocereusInformal label: Shorthand or a describing label rather than a cultivar name. It does not promise one specific plant.

Of the 16 things this page says, 16 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

Not recorded

No botanical name on file. What the sources do say about its species is in the writing below.

Filed under Other Trichocereus

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

At least three distinct lineages carry the name Colossus.

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 confirmed cross for Colossus, and no other entry here names it as a parent. What the record does hold is below.

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.

Open-pollinated and unclear. One of the three lines is grown from open-pollinated seed collected off a botanical garden plant, and the researcher's own note argues that seed taken from botanic gardens is likely to be of unclear hybrid parentage because these plants are largely .Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The longer version

Species, as our sources record it: unresolved; the wiki page notes it may be or a hybrid depending on which plant is meant.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The first is the the researcher Keeper Trout documented in print.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The second, Ressler's Colossus, was raised from open-pollinated seed taken off the Colossus growing at the Berkeley Botanical Garden.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The third came out of the Misplant seed bank and has unconfirmed , with no agreement on whether it is a pure pachanoi or a hybrid.Reported, but not confirmed.

Trout's notes record that the Berkeley plant was grown in 1966 from seed of Ritter's Cereus colloseus Bolivia 66.0159, supplied by H. Winter in Germany, and that garden records show that plant has since died.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Because the surviving plant grew between a puquiensis and another accession that had been seen flowering together, Trout treats a spontaneous hybrid as a real possibility that will probably never be settled.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The name entered horticulture when a grower took seed pods from the Berkeley garden one September and passed the resulting seedlings around.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

One Californian nursery lists two of these lineages side by side as separate products, each named for the grower it came from.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.An earlier pass here threw that match away because the catalogue could not say which Colossus is the one this library means — which was the right answer to a question about traits and the wrong one about this. The claim this entry makes is that more than one plant carries the name, and a single seller stocking two of them is evidence for exactly that and for nothing more.Reported, but not confirmed.

Where the name comes from

At least three distinct lineages carry the name Colossus.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

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.

Notes
The wiki page states plainly that no single description of physical traits is possible, because several different plants share the name.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

Three separate lineages carry the name and the wiki page warns growers not to assume the Misplant plant is the one Trout wrote about. Whether the plant now growing at the Berkeley garden is what the name originally referred to is treated as unknowable.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.Our own notes list Bob Ressler's Colossus among names circulating without verified traits, consistent with this entry.Reported, but not confirmed.

Drawing of two plain Trichocereus columns of different heights, standing for the wider genus rather than one plant.
A Trichocereus column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Other Trichocereus. 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.