Airampoa ayrampo

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Airampoa ayrampo, photographed by capacoscar — fig. d capacoscar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189539617

Airampoa ayrampo, photographed by Naturalist Tours — fig. g Naturalist Tours, CC0 1.0 / obs. 112475884

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Airampoa ayrampo, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northwest	AGW	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia	BOL
Chile North	CLN
Peru	PER

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 220 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-6.1 °C	-0.5 °C	2.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	14.5 °C	16.9 °C	20.8 °C
Annual rainfall	332 mm	695 mm	1,519 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	2 mm	16 mm	48 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 220 research-grade observations of Airampoa ayrampo that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 37 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Airampoa albisaetacens (Backeb.) Doweld
Airampoa boliviensis (Backeb.) Doweld
Airampoa cedergreniana (Backeb.) Doweld
Airampoa chilensis (F.Ritter) Doweld
Airampoa minuscula (Backeb.) Doweld
Airampoa orurensis (Cárdenas) Doweld
Airampoa silvestris (Backeb.) Doweld
Airampoa soehrensii (Britton & Rose) Lodé
Cactus ayrampo Haenke
Opuntia albisaetacens Backeb.
Opuntia albisaetacens var. robustior Backeb.
Opuntia alcerrecensis Iliff
Opuntia ayrampo (Azara) Mottram
Opuntia boliviensis Backeb.
Opuntia cedergreniana Backeb.
Opuntia haenquiana Herrera
Opuntia minuscula (Backeb.) G.D.Rowley
Opuntia minuscula var. silvestris (Backeb.) Krainz
Opuntia orurensis Cárdenas
Opuntia poecilacantha Backeb.
Opuntia silvestris Backeb.
Opuntia soehrensii Britton & Rose
Platyopuntia albisaetacens (Backeb.) F.Ritter
Platyopuntia chilensis F.Ritter

and 13 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.