Comments on ribs

The following image from Huántar de Chavin appears commented upon as bearing a four ribbed San Pedro branch.

Our thanks to Mango Frangipanni for the rendering above!

  It is perhaps worth noting that while drawings are two dimensional, cacti are not.
  To show four ribs in a plane means that the plant has more than four ribs.
  I do not suggest that the depiction of four ribs is not highly significant in both mythological and religiospiritual terms.

Please note
  This Trichocereus pachanoi cutting does not have four ribs. It has seven.



  This Trichocereus pachanoi cutting also does not have four ribs. It has eight.




  Additional claims that Trichocereus pachanoi has only 6-8 ribs should take into consideration the following image:



  The claim for T. pachanoi having only 6-8 ribs arose from Britton & Rose's original description of the species. It is important to understand that these numbers were what Britton & Rose observed in the population they based the description upon and therefore are not absolute values for the species throughout its entire range.
  It is probably worth noting that from 4-14 ribs have been reported observed on the occasional T. pachanoi by commercial growers, botanists travelling extensively in Peru and other reliable sources.