A short history of Notocacti.

In 1819 the first plant that we now call a Notocactus, was described by Adrian Hardy Haworth. Haworth placed this plant, Notocactus erinaceus, in the genus Cactus. After a few years the species ottonis, linkii, scopa and langsdorfii were also added to the genus Cactus. Later, in 1830, Link & Otto transferred all of these species to the Genus Echinocactus. As time went by many new plants, such as N. mammulosus, haselbergii, leninghausii and the true N. muricatus, were discovered. Which resulted in Echinocactus becoming quite bloated.

So, later in 1850, Salm Dyck established the genus Malacocarpus and moved into it some of the Echinocacti, using N. corynodes as the type species. After this in 1899, Karl Schumann used the name Malacocarpus as a subgenus of Echinocactus and also established the name Notocactus as another subgenus of Echinocactus. Again, many new plants were added into these subgenera.

We now come to the twentieth century with the publication, in 1920, of The Cactaceae by Britton and Rose. They used the name Malacocarpus, as a genus, to include a diverse range of plants (including plants we now know as members of Notocactus, Parodia, Frailea, Islaya and Neoporteria which were later moved by various people).

In 1929 Alwin Berger transferred some of the remaining plants to the newly raised Genus Notocactus. Leaving the true Malacocarpus species where they were. However, in 1964, D.M. Porter renamed the Genus Malacocarpus as Wigginsia. This was required because the name Malacocarpus had been used, in 1843, for a Genera of Zygophyllaceae (The creosote-bush family).

NOTE: I have found various books say that Malacocarpus was used as a name for a genus of plants in the Rutaceae, however I can find no reference to this in any form. The Zygophyllaceae and Rutaceae do seem to be related, so perhaps they were all members of the same group ? or perhaps this is a mistake ? If you know then please Let Me Know. Further info can be found at: The Families of Flowering Plants under Rutaceae and Zygophyllaceae.

Curt Backeberg, in his Die Cactaceae Band 3 of 1959, kept the genus Malacocarpus/Wigginsia and used his new genera established in 1942: Eriocactus including N. leninghausii and grossei etc and Brasilicactus including N. haselbergii and graessneri and divided Notocactus into two subgenera: Notocactus to include plants related to N. ottonis and scopa and Neonotocactus to include plants related to N. mammulosus and mueller-melchersii.

After this Buxbaum and Krainz transferred all of Backeberg's plants back into Notocactus and reduced his names to Subgenera, i.e Notocactus, Neonotocactus, Brasilicactus etc. They also moved the Brazilian Parodia species later, in 1979, given the generic name Brasiliparodia by Ritter in his Kakteen in Südamerika - Band 1.

In 1981, in his book Classification and Illustration of Cacti., Yoshiro Ito recombined some species, added a few new varieties and divided the genus Notocactus into 4 subgenera.

Subgenus	Type species	Note
Dasynotocactus	apricus	for plants now included in the Setacei
Rhapidonotocactus	pampeanus	for plants now included in the Mammulosi.
Pogononotocactus	neo-ottonis	for plants now included in the Paucispini.
Calocomonotocactus	scopa	for plants now included in the Scopanae.

None of these have been recognised by any of the Notocactus community

And so we come to the present day. The Genus Notocactus as Notophiles know it has had some refinements by Havlicek, to distinguish various groupings in most of the Subgenera. This now gives us a wide variety of groupings that can be shown to be related, via intermediate species. And apart from the recent transfer of Notocactus into Parodia by the IOS Consensus, everything is hunky-dory in Notoland.

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