Hi, I finally have a flowering plant of my own to show you! Actually I have 2 of these, both flowering. Of course, as usual, I don't know what its called. I suspect it is a succulent not a cactus but my guesses have all been wrong so far.

You're right, it's not a cactus but a succulent, and more precisely a Stapeliad... Pretty sure it's a form of Huernia schneideriana (or a hybrid there of). Native to Tanzania....

I agree with Navajoa; it's Huernia schneideriana, or possibly a hybrid thereof, although the flowers in this photo are fairly typical of a straight schneideriana.

Going off-thread, this raises a bit of a bug-bear of mine. It can be a bit hard to ID some of the huernia species getting around these days, as there has been a lot of hybridisation between cultivated species. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to the asclepiads, and it bothers me to see the gene-pools of the species being so mixed - combined with the tendency for many species to be sold unlabelled, it can be difficult to sort out what's what. Given that there are quite a few species that closely resemble each other in the first place, I don't see the point in blurring the taxonomic boundaries further: over time this would tend to create a large pool of mongel plants, quite possibly at the expense of the original parent species. This is hardly a desirable circumstance from either a collector's or a biologist's point of view.

I have few huernias myself that came without labels, and I'm suspicious that they too are hybrids. I'll post photos of the flowers when they appear and see what others think.

Yes it's strange as you'd think that Asclepiads would be most likely to be purer species than a lot of other plants, due to the fact they propogate so easily from cuttings (so the same "pure" clone gets replicated) and that they are so hard to pollinate which leads to seed (pure or hybridised) being very scarce...
As for names, id'ing them is very hard without locality data as a lot do look very similar, even when in flower. And just about all of them look alike when not !!
As for the names, Ebay seems to cause a lot of trouble in that respect. It seems that a lot of sellers like to dredge up old/invalid names so it looks like a different plant and people buy it again, not realising they already have it under another name...I don't even bother with it anymore.....

A Tanzanian succulent? Who knows what will turn up in my collection next. Thanks for the ID guys.

One other thing Emma, it might be part mutant too :-)
That flower has six lobes, the norm for all members of the Asclepiad family is five...it happens a bit, so not incredibly rare, just a little different. Were the other flowers six lobed too ?

Hey hellos....

WoodDragon why is hybridisation undesired from a biologist point of view? I undestand the purist in you, so I understand why it's bad for some collectors. I think I am somewhat the opposite, I like to try to figure out what my stenocacti are , I mean, X's of which species - but of course I love to have a couple of labeled plants, especially if I pay for it in a special cacti nursery

Emma, well done, still haven't got to see/smell my first stapeliad flower!