Eriosyce aurata(Pfeiff.) Backeb.

WFO wfo-0000676024 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Nicolás Villaseca Merino
fig. a Nicolás Villaseca Merino, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-10-16 / obs. 185646857
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Darío De la Fuente
fig. b Darío De la Fuente, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143545689
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Thor-Rune Hansen
fig. c Thor-Rune Hansen, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 106697856
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. d Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114537378
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by John G. Phillips
fig. e John G. Phillips, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178084566
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Franco Capriroli
fig. f Franco Capriroli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 168428451
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. g Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155247650
Eriosyce aurata, photographed by Bernardino Camousseigt
fig. h Bernardino Camousseigt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177677104

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

Regions where Eriosyce aurata is native: Chile Central, Chile North Chile CentralChile North
Native distribution of Eriosyce aurata, 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
Chile Central CLC SOUTHERN AMERICA
Chile North CLN

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 31 in flower of 331 examined

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Eriosyce aurata 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. 31 of 331 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 433 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.5 °C 4.1 °C 9.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.6 °C 24.2 °C 28.5 °C
Annual rainfall 68 mm 265 mm 856 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 1 mm 12 mm 75 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 433 research-grade observations of Eriosyce aurata 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 21 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.

  • Echinocactus auratus Pfeiff.
  • Echinocactus ceratistes Otto ex Pfeiff.
  • Echinocactus sandillon Gay
  • Eriosyce algarrobensis F.Ritter
  • Eriosyce aurata var. aurata
  • Eriosyce aurata var. spinibarbis (F.Ritter) Katt.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes (Otto ex Pfeiff.) Britton & Rose
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. combarbalensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. coquimbensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. jorgensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. mollesensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. vallenarensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ceratistes var. zorillaensis Backeb.
  • Eriosyce ihotzkyanae F.Ritter
  • Eriosyce lapampaensis F.Ritter
  • Eriosyce sandillon (Gay) Phil.
  • Eriosyce sandillon var. algarrobensis (F.Ritter) A.E.Hoffm.
  • Eriosyce sandillon var. mollesensis (Backeb.) A.E.Hoffm.
  • Eriosyce sandillon var. vallenarensis (Backeb.) A.E.Hoffm.
  • Eriosyce spinibarbis F.Ritter
  • Trichocereus ceratistes (Otto) H.P.Kelsey & Dayton

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.