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
Trichocereus scopulicola seal. 4 ribs recorded, recorded as spineless.

Scopulicola

Trichocereus scopulicola

Well documented

Also written as Scop

This entry covers the species itself rather than a single : , the smooth, glossy, effectively spineless with only four to six broad ribs and large white night flowers. Nearly everything in cultivation is thought to trace to one Bolivian seed collection made by Friedrich Ritter under the number FR991, because no records exist. Whether any wild population survives is disputed on the wiki page, with one account of goats wiping out the isolated habitat and another of recent wild-collected seed.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

  • near spineless
  • 4-6 ribs
  • glossy green
  • white night flowers

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

Of the 17 things this page says, 7 name who reports them and 10 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 scopulicola

syn. Echinopsis scopulicola

Filed under Scopulicola

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

The documented origin of scopulicola in cultivation is Friedrich Ritter's Bolivian seed collection, recorded under the field number FR991.

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

tap any name to visit it

This cultivar: Trichocereus scopulicola. Children: Hulk Balls, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its seed parent — unconfirmed; RSSS SCOP × Huanu, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its seed parent — unconfirmed; Scop × VRG, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its seed parent — unconfirmed; Shift, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its seed parent — unconfirmed; Zelly, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its seed parent — unconfirmed; Greg, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its pollen parent — unconfirmed; Huaranzensis × Scop, Hybrid family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its pollen parent — unconfirmed; Juice Box, Scopulicola family, Trichocereus scopulicola is recorded as its pollen parent — unconfirmed.

Trichocereus scopulicolayou are hereChildHulk BallsChildRSSS SCOP × HuanuChildScop × VRGChildShiftChildZellyChildGregChildHuaranzensis × ScopChildJuice Box

Every ring is that plant’s own seal, in its family’s colour — open one to keep going. Arrow keys move between them.

Each plant wears its own seal here, coloured by its family — so a cross shows which side brought what before you read a name. A dashed ring is a plant with no page here yet, and a wire is only ever drawn from a parent somebody wrote down. Children are worked out from the other entries rather than stored on this one, so recording a cross anywhere lights it up on both plants.

The line matters as much as the box. A dashed line is a cross we can report but cannot confirm. Every cross drawn here is at that weakest reading, which is the true state of this plant's record.

Drawn 3 generations each way. Everything our sources record for this plant is in the drawing; the family stops there, not the tree.

The longer version

One grower states that no records of cuttings exist, so most or all cultivated plants are thought to descend from that one seed collection.Reported, but not confirmed.

Some community members believe the species may be gone from the wild, saying goats were introduced soon after Ritter found it and destroyed the isolated population.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Others report unconfirmed wild sources, including a grower who received two seedlings said to be from wild-collected Bolivian seed, one of which survived.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The specialist reference puts numbers on the collection the wiki page only names: Ritter found it on a Bolivian expedition in 1959 at Tapecua in the Tarija department, in cactus forest at roughly a thousand to fifteen hundred metres, and sold the seed through his winter seed lists — which is how a plant that is genuinely rare in the wild ended up in gardens everywhere.Reported, but not confirmed.

Asked for this species by name, a compiled index of collectors' own numbered field lists returns two locality records and one collector — Ritter's — and nothing from anybody else. That is an independent reference-tier record agreeing with the wiki's account of how narrow the collected base is. It is not evidence about any particular plant in cultivation, and it does not settle whether a wild population survives.Reported by one source, and not corroborated anywhere else.

Where the name comes from

The documented origin of scopulicola in cultivation is Friedrich Ritter's Bolivian seed collection, recorded under the field number FR991.Reported, but not confirmed.A compiled index of collectors' own field numbers is asked for this species and returns that collection and no other: Ritter's, at two localities in the Tarija department of Bolivia, between 1000 and 1500 metres.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.

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

  • Not documented yet.

Skin
and stems: robust stems in dark green to green.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Dark to glaucous green robust stems are ordinary for the genus and nothing here conflicts.
Ribs
Four to six, broad and rounded, most often five.Reported by 2 independent sources; we have not seen it ourselves.
Spines
Extremely short, and frequently either missing altogether or shrunk to tiny blunt radials, so the plant reads as spineless.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Very short or absent spines reduced to blunt radials is a well-known spineless habit in the genus.
Flowers
Large, white and night-opening, staying open into the morning.Reported by 2 independent sources; we have not seen it ourselves.Recorded as scented.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Notes
: easy to overlook, and the two accounts differ on why. The community wiki calls them flat; the specialist reference has them sunken, with very little wool, and unusually small for the genus at one to four millimetres. Both readings are kept.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

The wiki page carries an unresolved dispute over whether wild scopulicola still exists: one account says the habitat was destroyed by introduced goats, another reports seedlings from recently wild-collected seed, and a third mentions a rumoured rediscovery. The wiki page is bot-compiled and unverified.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Drawing of a scopulicola-type column: smooth-edged and glossy, with very few ribs, tiny areoles and no spines.
A Scopulicola column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Scopulicola. 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.