A "soft spines" species that is endemic to one small region of the Brazilian Caatinga:

James,

That is a beautiful cactus! I did a little reading on it and realize why I've never seen one before. Very Nice!

I've never seen that before. It is a beautiful thing.

Thank you Daisy and AG. It has a restrictive range:
Seabra, northeastern Brazil. I couldn't remember that when I wrote my post - thank you for jogging my memory so that I could remedy my ommision

BTW, Daisy, I love the Mark Frost quote in your sig. block

Thanks James (the quote)

Also, your cactus is on the Red List, less than 1000 plants left in its very limited native range.

Those were not my plants Daisy - the photos were taken a number of years ago. I did have a couple but they froze in an unheated greenhouse when I was recovering from surgery (I lost a lot of plants then). I would like to find another M. streckeri - seed is offered on EBay from time to time but it is usually very pricey and I am no longer up to growing from seed anyway.

I wonder how many are actually growing in captivity, other than botanical collections. It doesn't seem to be too common if none of us has ever seen it.