Lepismium cruciforme(Vell.) Miq.

WFO wfo-0000357990 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by William G. Borges
fig. a William G. Borges, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-12 / obs. 182923490
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. b Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 173231894
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes
fig. c Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168689936
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes
fig. d Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168265554
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes
fig. e Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145579857
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes
fig. f Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 118338312
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by demianlescano
fig. g demianlescano, CC0 1.0 / obs. 71207853
Lepismium cruciforme, photographed by Leonel Roget
fig. h Leonel Roget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 33489781

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
645347
Filed as
Lepismium cruciforme (Vell.) Miq.
Det. by
N. P. Taylor; D. C. Zappi 1992-01-01
Collected
J. N. Rose 1915-08-03
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 7 botanical countries

Regions where Lepismium cruciforme is native: Argentina Northeast, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Paraguay, Uruguay Argentina NortheastBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralParaguayUruguay
Native distribution of Lepismium cruciforme, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Paraguay PAR
Uruguay URU

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 358 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 9.3 °C 12.4 °C 17.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.9 °C 28.8 °C 31.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,244 mm 1,623 mm 2,205 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 123 mm 278 mm 419 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 358 research-grade observations of Lepismium cruciforme 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.

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.

  • Cactus cruciformis Vell.
  • Cactus cruciformis Arrab.
  • Cereus cruciformis (Arrab.) Steud.
  • Cereus elegans Pfeiff.
  • Cereus knightii Parm. ex Pfeiff.
  • Cereus myosurus Salm-Dyck ex DC.
  • Cereus squamulosus Salm-Dyck ex DC.
  • Cereus tenuis DC.
  • Cereus tenuispinus Haw.
  • Hariota cruciformis Kuntze
  • Hariota knightii (Pfeiff.) Kuntze
  • Hariota knightii var. tenuispinis Kuntze
  • Hariota ramosissima (Lem.) Kuntze
  • Hariota squamulosa (K.Schum.) Kuntze
  • Lepismium anceps (F.A.C.Weber) Borg
  • Lepismium cavernosum G.Lindb.
  • Lepismium commune Pfeiff.
  • Lepismium cruciforme f. anceps (F.A.C.Weber) Supplie
  • Lepismium cruciforme f. myosurus (Salm-Dyck ex DC.) Supplie
  • Lepismium cruciforme subvar. vollii (Backeb.) Backeb.
  • Lepismium cruciforme var. anceps (F.A.C.Weber) Backeb.
  • Lepismium cruciforme var. cavernosum (G.Lindb.) Backeb.
  • Lepismium cruciforme var. knightii (Pfeiff.) Boom
  • Lepismium cruciforme var. myosurus (Salm-Dyck ex DC.) Backeb.

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.
  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.