Borzicactus acanthurus

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Borzicactus acanthurus, photographed by David F. Belmonte — fig. a David F. Belmonte, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-09 / obs. 196541466

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 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Borzicactus acanthurus, 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
Peru	PER	SOUTHERN AMERICA

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.

Flowering 62 in flower of 80 examined

73%

76%

67%

91%

76%

Proportion of examined Borzicactus acanthurus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	1	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	1	too few examined
Apr	2	3	too few examined
May	11	15	73%	48% to 89%
Jun	2	2	too few examined
Jul	13	17	76%	53% to 90%
Aug	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Sep	10	11	91%	62% to 98%
Oct	13	17	76%	53% to 90%
Nov	2	3	too few examined
Dec	4	4	too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Borzicactus acanthurus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 62 of 80 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 188 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	0.4 °C	14.4 °C	15.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	11.0 °C	23.4 °C	25.7 °C
Annual rainfall	30 mm	121 mm	1,092 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	4 mm	10 mm	54 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 188 research-grade observations of Borzicactus acanthurus 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 52 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.

Binghamia acanthura (Vaupel) Borg
Binghamia eriotricha (Werderm. & Backeb.) Borg
Borzicactus eriotrichus (Werderm. & Backeb.) Backeb.
Borzicactus faustianus Backeb.
Borzicactus keller-badensis (Backeb. & Krainz) Krainz
Cereus acanthurus Vaupel
Cereus eriotrichus Werderm. & Backeb.
Cereus faustianus Backeb.
Cleistocactus acanthurus (Vaupel) D.R.Hunt
Cleistocactus acanthurus subsp. canetensis (Rauh & Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus acanthurus subsp. faustianus (Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus acanthurus subsp. pullatus (Rauh & Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus acanthurus var. faustianus (Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus acanthurus var. pullatus (Rauh & Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus erectispinus (Rauh & Backeb.) Ostolaza
Cleistocactus erigens (Rauh & Backeb.) Ostolaza
Echinopsis acanthura (Vaupel) Molinari
Echinopsis acanthura subsp. canetensis (Rauh & Backeb.) Molinari
Echinopsis acanthura subsp. faustiana (Backeb.) Molinari & Mayta
Echinopsis acanthura subsp. pullata (Rauh & Backeb.) Molinari
Echinopsis erectispina (Rauh & Backeb.) Molinari
Echinopsis erigens (Rauh & Backeb.) Molinari
Haageocereus convergens F.Ritter
Haageocereus eremiticus F.Ritter

and 28 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.