Mammillaria giganteaHildm. ex K.Schum.

WFO wfo-0001256136 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by P Gonzalez Zamora
fig. a P Gonzalez Zamora, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-08-04 / obs. 89340495
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. b Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 72507361
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. c Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 79552895
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. d Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 101531632
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. e Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 101532873
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. f Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 101533308
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. g Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 101532512
Mammillaria gigantea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. h Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 101127957

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 Mammillaria gigantea is native: Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southwest Mexico NortheastMexico Southwest
Native distribution of Mammillaria gigantea, 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
Mexico Northeast MXE NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 174 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.2 °C 6.1 °C 9.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.7 °C 26.3 °C 29.1 °C
Annual rainfall 437 mm 554 mm 662 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 37 mm 46 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 174 research-grade observations of Mammillaria gigantea 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 18 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.

  • Mammillaria armatissima R.T.Craig
  • Mammillaria flavovirens f. cristata (Salm-Dyck) Schelle
  • Mammillaria flavovirens var. cristata Salm-Dyck
  • Mammillaria gigantea subsp. flavovirens Rogoz. & Plein
  • Mammillaria gigantea subsp. hamiltonhoytiae (Bravo) Rogoz. & Plein
  • Mammillaria guanajuatensis Rudge ex K.Schum.
  • Mammillaria hamiltonhoytea (Bravo) Werderm.
  • Mammillaria hamiltonhoytiae (Bravo) Werderm.
  • Mammillaria hamiltonhoytiae var. fulvaflora R.T.Craig
  • Mammillaria hastifera Krainz & A.Keller
  • Mammillaria macdowellii K.Schum.
  • Mammillaria ocotillensis R.T.Craig
  • Mammillaria ocotillensis var. brevispina R.T.Craig
  • Mammillaria ocotillensis var. longispina R.T.Craig
  • Mammillaria saint-pieana Backeb.
  • Neomammillaria gigantea (Hildm. ex K.Schum.) Britton & Rose
  • Neomammillaria hamiltonhoytea Bravo
  • Neomammillaria hamiltonhoytiae Bravo

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.