Austrocylindropuntia shaferi(Britton & Rose) Backeb.

WFO wfo-0000557354 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Mariela Nicole Crespo Carrazana
fig. a Mariela Nicole Crespo Carrazana, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 194203689
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. b Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177550002
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. c Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177549816
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Nolan Exe
fig. d Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59340261
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Andreas Schneider
fig. e Andreas Schneider, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167242963
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros
fig. f Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194049578
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Alejandro Bruno Miranda-Calle
fig. g Alejandro Bruno Miranda-Calle, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192259634
Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, photographed by Alejandro Bruno Miranda-Calle
fig. h Alejandro Bruno Miranda-Calle, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192259199

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000100926
Filed as
Opuntia shaferi Britton & Rose
Det. by
Kiesling, R.
Collected
Shafer, J.A. 1917-02-06
Origin
AR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 2 botanical countries

Regions where Austrocylindropuntia shaferi is native: Argentina Northwest, Bolivia Argentina NorthwestBolivia
Native distribution of Austrocylindropuntia shaferi, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northwest AGW SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL

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 429 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.2 °C 0.1 °C 2.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.4 °C 16.3 °C 20.2 °C
Annual rainfall 520 mm 906 mm 1,509 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 47 mm 90 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 429 research-grade observations of Austrocylindropuntia shaferi 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 15 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.

  • Austrocylindropuntia humahuacana (Backeb.) Backeb.
  • Austrocylindropuntia steiniana Backeb.
  • Austrocylindropuntia vestita var. shaferi (Britton & Rose) F.Ritter
  • Austrocylindropuntia weingartiana (Backeb.) Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia humahuacana Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia shaferi (Britton & Rose) Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia weingartiana (Backeb.) Backeb.
  • Opuntia humahuacana (Backeb.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia ignescens var. steiniana (Backeb.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia shaferi Britton & Rose
  • Opuntia shaferi var. humahuacana (Backeb.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia steiniana (Backeb.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia weingartiana Backeb.
  • Trichopuntia shaferi (Britton & Rose) Guiggi
  • Trichopuntia shaferi subsp. humahuacana (Backeb.) Guiggi

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. 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.