Fields
also known as Field's Macrogonus
A · well documentedDocumentation grade: AOrigin traceable to a named source, with a date, locality or institutional accession number behind it.
name drift medium · name sometimes ambiguousName drift risk: mediumThis name is occasionally applied to more than one plant, or competes with a similar spelling. Check the notes before buying.
IDENTIFYING FEATURES
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LINEAGE
Parents:No Data
Parents note:No Data
Offspring:No Data
ORIGIN
Locality:Field Cactus Farm, Tennyson, northern Victoria, Australia
Origin note:Ralph Field, born 1896 at Leongatha in rural Victoria, paid GBP 200 for a share in a South American collecting expedition, in return for a guaranteed shipment of 1000 different varieties to Melbourne. The expedition covered roughly 6000 km over two years through Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. The plants that survived the voyage in the 1930s formed the bulk of the Field Cactus Farm at Tennyson, northern Victoria, one of the most significant cactus collections in the country.
STORY
Field's interest began at twelve, when he read an article in Boys Own describing how to grow a new cactus from a cutting, tried it on the family prickly pear, and succeeded. On Christmas Day 1908 his father took him to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne and he came home with a wagonload of cacti and succulents. His son Robert Field donated the collection to Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in 2015 to 2016, and it now forms the bulk of the Arid Garden, opened in November 2020, holding over 3000 cacti and succulents across roughly 400 species. Some plants there are more than 80 years old.
NOTES
Grade raised from B to A: named collector, dated expedition, named institutional home. Note the record covers one clone out of a much larger collection; Entheogenesis Australis list at least eleven Trichocereus carrying the Fields name.
Name drift · mediumTwo name problems. First, the collector was Ralph **Field**, singular, as used by the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and the Australian press; "Fields" is community drift, though the clones are universally traded as "Fields" so both forms need to resolve. Second, the German botanist behind the expedition is given as "Harold Blossfeld" by Entheogenesis Australis and by several Australian press pieces, but the family record is that Robert Blossfeld, born 1882, was the father and mail-order plantsman, and his son **Harry** Blossfeld, born 1913, was the collector. Harry is the name used across the Trichocereus community. Harold looks to be a propagated error.
SOURCES
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