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Sal's Blue seal. long spines recorded.

Hybrid

Sal's Blue

Well documented

Also written as Sals Blue, Sal's Blue T. bridgesii/peruvianus hybrid

Sal's Blue is a hybrid leaning towards , taken from a San Diego stand planted in the 1980s and named for the man who kept it. In full sun the plants usually come out strongly blue with long spines, but the wiki page is explicit that the appearance varies from piece to piece. Nobody is credited with making the , and the actual parent plants are not named.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

  • strong blue in sun
  • long spines
  • variable look
  • old-growth stand

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

Of the 9 things this page says, 1 is something several independent sources agree on, 1 names who reports it and 7 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 Hybrid

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

The material was cut from a stand in San Diego kept by a man called Sal, who was 99 years old at the time.

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 Sal's Blue, 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.

The wiki page calls it a bridgesii-dominant hybrid of bridgesii and but names no individual parent plants and no breeder.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The longer version

Species, as our sources record it: bridgesii-dominant T. bridgesii / peruvianus hybrid.

That stand is reported to have gone in the ground during the 1980s, so the plants are old growth.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Where the name comes from

The material was cut from a stand in San Diego kept by a man called Sal, who was 99 years old at the time.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.

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

  • Not documented yet.

Skin
Grown in full sun it usually turns strongly blue.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Spines
Long, again mainly on sun-grown plants.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Long spines that develop most fully under strong sun match ordinary behaviour in the genus.
Growth habit
The wiki page warns that the look varies rather than staying fixed.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

The wiki page hedges its own trait description by saying the can look several different ways, so a photo of one plant is not a reliable guide to another.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Drawing of a cross: one column carrying a rounded, nearly spineless habit on one side and a deeply notched, long-spined one on the other.
A hybrid column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Hybrid. 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.