The shop is closed just now. The shop is not open for orders yet. Everything here is real and grown in my own yard — have a look around — but I am not taking money until the last few things are in place. Ask about a plant

Mysterious Yard
Cart, empty
KK242 seal. Plain ring: nothing here sets a rib count, a spine length or a growth form the ring can mark.

Peruvianus

KK242

Well documented

KK242 is a Knize collection number that has been sold as seed for decades, which means plants under it range from Matucana-type Peruvian torches to plants that look like cuzcoensis. Two vegetative also travel under the number: a well-liked blue-green with medium to long spines, and a much rarer almost nobody has described. Treat the code as a batch label, not a promise that two plants match.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

  • highly variable
  • blue-green clone
  • medium-long spines
  • knize code

PeruvianusField-collection code: A collector's accession number — initials and a number — rather than a nickname.

Of the 13 things this page says, 4 name who reports them and 9 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 Peruvianus

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

The code is one of Karel Knize's, and seed under it was distributed over several decades.

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 KK242. 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

Species, as our sources record it: cuzcoensis or T. peruvianus depending on the plant.Reported by one source, and not corroborated anywhere else.

Two named clones also circulate under the number rather than as seed: a blue-green peruvianus and a much rarer pachanoi.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

One specimen discussed on the wiki page belongs to the collector Skip Jones, who said it came from another private collector's garden.Our sources take opposite positions on this, and it is not settled.

The same reference lists five separate collections sold under this one number, from Matucana, the Rio Chillon, Langa, the Rio Lurin and Huancavelica, which is the concrete form of the warning above.Reported, but not confirmed.

Where the name comes from

The code is one of Karel Knize's, and seed under it was distributed over several decades.Reported by 2 independent sources; we have not seen it ourselves.The collectors' field-number record files KK 242 as Knize's, gathered as Trichocereus peruvianus at Matucana in the Huaraz area of Peru at 2000 metres — which is one of the several collections the number covers, not the whole of it.Reported by one source, and not corroborated anywhere else.

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
Because it is a broad seed line, plants vary widely, from Matucana-type peruvianus through to cuzcoensis-looking plants.Reported, but not confirmed.The peruvianus clone is blue-green with medium to long spines and prominent .One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Glaucous blue-green skin, medium to long spines and prominent areoles are all ordinary for this group.Almost nothing is recorded about the pachanoi clone's appearance.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

A number like KK242 names a seed batch rather than one plant, so two growers' KK242 need not be the same thing.Reported, but not confirmed.The wiki page records scepticism about the accuracy of labelling on plants sold through online auction sites. A Californian nursery holding the mother plants from one grower's 2006 import of Knize's KK242 seed says the plants from that batch look so unlike earlier ones that growers give them a name of their own — which is the same caveat arrived at from a seller's own rather than from the record.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Drawing of a peruvianus-type column: stout and blue with a heavy powdery bloom, ribs deeply notched between large areoles, and long spines.
A Peruvianus column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Peruvianus. 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.