Echinopsis aurea

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Echinopsis aurea, photographed by Carlos Martorell — fig. a Carlos Martorell, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-04-11 / obs. 23452746

Echinopsis aurea, photographed by cactusauria — fig. b cactusauria, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181547158

Echinopsis aurea, photographed by Ezequiel Racker — fig. c Ezequiel Racker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196424674

Echinopsis aurea, photographed by aacocucci — fig. d aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160939526

Echinopsis aurea, photographed by Nicolas Olejnik — fig. e Nicolas Olejnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60252850

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 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Echinopsis aurea, 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 Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW

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 46 in flower of 58 examined

100%

86%

64%

Proportion of examined Echinopsis aurea in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	2	too few examined
Feb	1	1	too few examined
Mar	0	1	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	0	1	too few examined
Jun	0	0	too few examined
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	1	2	too few examined
Oct	15	15	100%	80% to 100%
Nov	19	22	86%	67% to 95%
Dec	9	14	64%	39% to 84%

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Echinopsis aurea 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. 46 of 58 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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.

Also published as 63 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.

Echinopsis aurea var. albiflora (Rausch) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. catamarcensis (F.Ritter) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. depressicostata (F.Ritter) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. dobeana (Dölz) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. fallax (Oehme) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. lariojensis (F.Ritter) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. quinensis Rausch
Echinopsis aurea var. quinesensis Rausch
Echinopsis aurea var. sierragrandensis (Rausch) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis aurea var. tortuosa (Rausch) J.Ullmann
Echinopsis cylindracea (Backeb.) H.Friedrich
Echinopsis densispina f. leucomalla (Wessner) Buining
Echinopsis dobeana (Dölz) J.G.Lamb.
Echinopsis fallax (Oehme) H.Friedrich
Echinopsis fallax var. albiflora (Rausch) Lambinon
Echinopsis fallax var. catamarcensis (F.Ritter) Lambinon
Echinopsis fallax var. cylindrica (Backeb.) J.G.Lamb.
Echinopsis fallax var. depressicostata (F.Ritter) Lambinon
Echinopsis fallax var. shaferi (Britton & Rose) Lambinon
Echinopsis fallax var. tortuosa (Rausch) J.G.Lamb.
Echinopsis leucomalla (Wessner) H.Friedrich
Echinopsis quinesensis (Rausch) H.Friedrich & Glaetzle
Hymenorebutia aurea (Britton & Rose) F.Ritter
Hymenorebutia aurea var. catamarcensis F.Ritter

and 39 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.