Mammillaria prolifera(Mill.) Haw.

Texas Nipple CactusTexas nipple cactusWest Indian Nipple-cactus

WFO wfo-0001287028 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by Jo Roberts
fig. a Jo Roberts, CC BY 4.0 / 2014-09-21 / obs. 108824018
Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by amantedarmanin
fig. b amantedarmanin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150875309
Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by Jo Roberts
fig. c Jo Roberts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108824066
Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by amantedarmanin
fig. d amantedarmanin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150875322
Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by Yolanda M. Leon
fig. e Yolanda M. Leon, CC0 1.0 / obs. 154511897
Mammillaria prolifera, photographed by Jo Roberts
fig. f Jo Roberts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109033158

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Mammillaria prolifera is native: Mexico Northeast, Texas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti Mexico NortheastTexasCubaDominican RepublicHaiti
Native distribution of Mammillaria prolifera, 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
Cuba CUB SOUTHERN AMERICA
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Mexico Northeast MXE NORTHERN AMERICA
Texas TEX

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 142 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.4 °C 9.7 °C 20.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.7 °C 33.6 °C 36.2 °C
Annual rainfall 491 mm 672 mm 960 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 54 mm 84 mm 148 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 142 research-grade observations of Mammillaria prolifera 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 55 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 cespititius (DC.) Kuntze
  • Cactus glomeratus Lam.
  • Cactus granulatus (Meinsh.) Kuntze
  • Cactus griseus (Salm-Dyck) Kuntze
  • Cactus mammillaris var. prolifer Aiton
  • Cactus multiceps (Salm-Dyck) Kuntze
  • Cactus proliferus Mill.
  • Cactus stellaris Salm-Dyck
  • Cactus stellatus Willd.
  • Cactus stellatus var. texanus (Engelm.) J.M.Coult.
  • Cactus texanus (Engelm.) Small
  • Chilita multiceps (Salm-Dyck) Orcutt
  • Chilita prolifera (Mill.) Orcutt
  • Ebnerella multiceps (Salm-Dyck) Buxb.
  • Ebnerella prolifera (Mill.) Buxb.
  • Escobariopsis prolifera (Mill.) Doweld
  • Escobariopsis prolifera subsp. arachnoidea (D.R.Hunt) Doweld
  • Escobariopsis prolifera subsp. haitiensis (K.Schum.) Doweld
  • Escobariopsis prolifera subsp. texana (Engelm.) Doweld
  • Mammillaria cespititia DC.
  • Mammillaria crebrispina var. nitida (Monv.) Labour.
  • Mammillaria glomerata (Lam.) DC.
  • Mammillaria granulata Meinsh.
  • Mammillaria grisea Salm-Dyck

and 31 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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.