Echinocactus platyacanthusLink & Otto

Candy Barrel Cactus

WFO wfo-0000660808 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by Alan Rockefeller
fig. a Alan Rockefeller, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-10 / obs. 187438494
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by Alan Rockefeller
fig. b Alan Rockefeller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187438584
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz
fig. c José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136655598
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz
fig. d José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136659150
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by Ulises Emmanuel Martínez Burgos
fig. e Ulises Emmanuel Martínez Burgos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185973781
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by Leticia Jiménez Hernández
fig. f Leticia Jiménez Hernández, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 147683911
Echinocactus platyacanthus, photographed by Alejandro Gómez Maya
fig. g Alejandro Gómez Maya, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122634455

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.

Flowering n = 182 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 182 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 49 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.

  • Coryphantha poselgeriana var. saltillensis (Poselg.) L.Bremer
  • Echinocactus arachnoideus Scheidw.
  • Echinocactus aulacogonus Lem.
  • Echinocactus aulacogonus var. diacopaulax Lem.
  • Echinocactus edulis Haage ex C.F.Först.
  • Echinocactus ghiesbreghtianus Lem.
  • Echinocactus grandis Rose
  • Echinocactus grandis f. polycormus Říha & Tabasco
  • Echinocactus grandis subsp. polycormus Říha & Tabasco
  • Echinocactus helophorus Lem.
  • Echinocactus helophorus var. laevior Lem.
  • Echinocactus helophorus var. longifossulatus Lem.
  • Echinocactus ingens Zucc. ex Pfeiff.
  • Echinocactus ingens f. aulocogonus (Lem.) Schelle
  • Echinocactus ingens f. helophorus (Lem.) Schelle
  • Echinocactus ingens f. saltillensis (Poselg.) Schelle
  • Echinocactus ingens f. viznaga (Hook.) Voss
  • Echinocactus ingens var. grandis Speg.
  • Echinocactus ingens var. helophorus (Lem.) K.Schum.
  • Echinocactus ingens var. saltillensis (Poselg.) K.Schum.
  • Echinocactus ingens var. subinermis K.Schum.
  • Echinocactus ingens var. viznaga (Hook.) K.Schum.
  • Echinocactus irroratus Scheidw.
  • Echinocactus karwinskianus Burkart

and 25 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.

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