Verity means the quality of being true. Verity is a malo 4 x malo 4 F2 cross. That is sort of like Malo 4 crossed back to itself. The seed was acquired from Misplant. A very few malo 4 crosses throw back to the scopulicola morphology of one of its parents. Verity is one of those. I have grown possibly thousands of Malo 4 x Malo 4 F2 and it would seem to be a rare trait. Verity is very scop like with small spines and juicy, plump look to it. It tends toward blockiness (flat sided) but it is definitely not there. Possibly useful for breeding in that direction. It throws quite a few 4 ribbed pups and some have grown to about 8 inches for me with out reverting. It may be useful for breeding cactus with a greater tendency to grow 4 ribbed columns.

The original Verity seedling. While this specimen is pretty flat sided, the average growth so far has been observed to be less so.

Verity typically grows as 5 ribbed, though not infrequently 6 and a surprising number start as 4 sided.

Culturally I can only say so much about it because I don’t have any large plants in the ground and have not gotten it to flowering size yet. I am hoping it has some of the cold hardiness of scopulicola. Verity is basically a scop morphologically though smaller in diameter. It may look like a scop, but being a hybrid, it is of more ethnopharmacologic interest than most scops. It is a very nice cactus and overall the best or most interesting so far out of the few scop-like Malo 4 x Malo 4 F2 crosses I’ve saved out over the years.

I am auctioning off the first Verity cuts this fall 2025.