Ferocactus viridescens (Coast Barrel Cactus)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ferocactus viridescens, photographed by Millie Basden — fig. a Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-06-22 / obs. 80364401

Ferocactus viridescens, photographed by Gjon Hazard — fig. b Gjon Hazard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73340754

Ferocactus viridescens, photographed by Jim Riley — fig. c Jim Riley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 71928397

Ferocactus viridescens, photographed by Eric Alan Isaacson — fig. h Eric Alan Isaacson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63048617

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 Ferocactus viridescens, 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
California	CAL	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northwest	MXN

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 235 in flower of 1,037 examined

42%

63%

44%

Proportion of examined Ferocactus viridescens in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	75	1%	0% to 7%
Feb	0	110	0%	0% to 3%
Mar	8	145	6%	3% to 11%
Apr	63	151	42%	34% to 50%
May	135	213	63%	57% to 70%
Jun	23	52	44%	32% to 58%
Jul	2	54	4%	1% to 13%
Aug	2	39	5%	1% to 17%
Sep	1	77	1%	0% to 7%
Oct	0	31	0%	0% to 11%
Nov	0	32	0%	0% to 11%
Dec	0	58	0%	0% to 6%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Ferocactus viridescens 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. 235 of 1,037 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.

Also published as 12 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 cylindraceus Engelm.
Echinocactus limitus Engelm. ex J.M.Coult.
Echinocactus orcuttii Engelm. ex Orcutt
Echinocactus viridescens Nutt.
Echinocactus viridescens Torr. & A.Gray
Ferocactus orcuttii (Engelm. ex Orcutt) Britton & Rose
Ferocactus viridescens subsp. littoralis (G.E.Linds.) F.Wolf & R.Wolf
Ferocactus viridescens subsp. orcuttii (Engelm. ex Orcutt) F.Wolf & R.Wolf
Ferocactus viridescens var. littoralis G.E.Linds.
Ferocactus viridescens var. orcuttii (Engelm. ex Orcutt) G.Unger
Ferocactus viridescens var. viridescens
Melocactus viridescens Nutt. ex Teschem.

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.