Lophophora williamsii 'Los Imagos'
Lophophora williamsii 'Los Imagos is a locality-provenance form of peyote traded under the Los Imagos label. It is not a bred cultivar in the horticultural sense but a provenance selection: plants grown from seed said to descend from a particular wild population, kept and labelled separately so growers can track where their stock came from. The name is a seed-trade label, and its exact wild provenance is not independently documented. In appearance and care it is an ordinary Lophophora williamsii, and some collectors value locality forms like this one for the subtle body shape, rib count and colour typical of a given population.
Care follows the parent species; see Lophophora williamsii for full cultivation notes.
Description
Like all peyote, 'Los Imagos' is a small, spineless, blue-green to grey-green button cactus with a soft, ribbed body and tufts of white wool at the areoles, from which small pink flowers open in the crown. Locality labels such as this one point to claimed provenance rather than to any single fixed trait, so plants can vary; growers who keep Los Imagos stock generally report the low, rounded, few-ribbed form typical of the species. Because these are provenance selections and not clonally propagated cultivars, individual seedlings within a batch will differ.
Cultivation
Cultivation is exactly as for the parent species — see Lophophora williamsii for the full account. In brief, peyote wants a very free-draining, mostly mineral mix, bright light, and careful watering: soak only when the soil has dried right out, and keep the plant dry and cool through winter. Peyote is naturally very slow-growing, so many growers speed up young plants by grafting seedlings onto a faster rootstock such as Myrtillocactus or Trichocereus, later growing them on their own roots. See Repotting and Pests and diseases for general technique.
Because 'Los Imagos' is a locality line rather than a clone, it is maintained from seed to keep the provenance true; keep it labelled and avoid mixing seed from different localities if you want the provenance to mean anything. The species does slowly offset with age, and clumps can be divided (see Propagation — offsets).
Legal status
Peyote and its principal alkaloid are controlled in many countries, and 'Los Imagos' carries exactly the same status as the species regardless of its locality label. In the United States it is a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law; a long-standing exemption exists for the religious use of peyote by the Native American Church, but this does not extend to general cultivation or trade. Like the whole cactus family, Lophophora is also listed under CITES Appendix II, which regulates international trade. Rules vary considerably between countries and, within the United States, between states, so growers should check the law in their own jurisdiction before acquiring or propagating plants. This entry is horticultural reference only.
See also
- Lophophora williamsii — the parent species
- Lophophora — the genus overview
- Grafting · Soil and potting mix · Watering · Propagation — seed