Cochemiea grahamii(Engelm.) Doweld

Graham's nipple cactus

WFO wfo-0000613657 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by Ian McFaul
fig. a Ian McFaul, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 193166674
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. b CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187686721
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by mark-groeneveld
fig. c mark-groeneveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186153235
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by Grant Mullen
fig. d Grant Mullen, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 184990824
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by Alina Martin
fig. e Alina Martin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189988216
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by Andrew Meeds
fig. f Andrew Meeds, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184738603
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. g Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183802161
Cochemiea grahamii, photographed by velodrome
fig. h velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182514999

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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Cochemiea grahamii is native: Arizona, California, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, New Mexico, Texas ArizonaCaliforniaMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestNew MexicoTexas
Native distribution of Cochemiea grahamii, 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
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
California CAL
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
New Mexico NWM
Texas TEX

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 187 in flower of 1,214 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Cochemiea grahamii 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. 187 of 1,214 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 2,048 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.2 °C 3.9 °C 6.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 32.4 °C 36.7 °C 40.7 °C
Annual rainfall 220 mm 336 mm 485 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 11 mm 24 mm 38 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 2,048 research-grade observations of Cochemiea grahamii 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 33 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.

  • Cactus grahamii (Engelm.) Kuntze
  • Chilita grahamii Orcutt
  • Chilita gueldemanniana (Backeb.) Buxb.
  • Chilita microcarpa (Engelm.) Buxb.
  • Chilita milleri (Britton & Rose) Orcutt
  • Chilita oliviae (Orcutt) Orcutt
  • Coryphantha grahamii (Engelm.) Rydb.
  • Ebnerella microcarpa (Engelm.) Buxb.
  • Ebnerella oliviae (Orcutt) Buxb.
  • Mammillaria grahamii Engelm.
  • Mammillaria grahamii subsp. grahamii
  • Mammillaria grahamii var. arizonica Quehl
  • Mammillaria grahamii var. oliviae (Orcutt) L.D.Benson
  • Mammillaria gueldemanniana Backeb.
  • Mammillaria microcarpa Engelm.
  • Mammillaria microcarpa f. auricarpa (W.T.Marshall) Neutel.
  • Mammillaria microcarpa f. gueldemanniana (Backeb.) Neutel.
  • Mammillaria microcarpa f. oliviae (Orcutt) Neutel.
  • Mammillaria microcarpa subsp. grahamii (Engelm.) Mottram
  • Mammillaria microcarpa var. auricarpa W.T.Marshall
  • Mammillaria microcarpa var. milleri (Britton & Rose) W.T.Marshall
  • Mammillaria milleri (Britton & Rose) Boed.
  • Mammillaria milleri f. auricarpa (W.T.Marshall) Neutel.
  • Mammillaria milleri f. gueldemanniana (Backeb.) Neutel.

and 9 more.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol MAGR9. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.