Melocactus curvispinus

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melocactus curvispinus, photographed by Angelica María Batista Morales — fig. b Angelica María Batista Morales, CC0 1.0 / obs. 109930757

Melocactus curvispinus, photographed by Stan Shebs — fig. c Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 158727307

Melocactus curvispinus, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak — fig. f Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 42032429

Melocactus curvispinus, photographed by scaup — fig. g scaup, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183046543

Melocactus curvispinus, photographed by Cullen Hanks — fig. h Cullen Hanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 39912885

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 13 botanical countries

Native distribution of Melocactus curvispinus, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Aruba	ARU	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
Cuba	CUB
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC
Trinidad-Tobago	TRT
Venezuela	VEN
Venezuelan Antilles	VNA
Mexico Gulf	MXG	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast	MXT
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.

Flowering 41 in flower of 77 examined

40%

33%

71%

75%

43%

50%

71%

57%

33%

Proportion of examined Melocactus curvispinus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	4	10	40%	17% to 69%
Feb	1	2	too few examined
Mar	2	6	33%	10% to 70%
Apr	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
May	6	8	75%	41% to 93%
Jun	2	4	too few examined
Jul	3	7	43%	16% to 75%
Aug	3	6	50%	19% to 81%
Sep	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Oct	4	7	57%	25% to 84%
Nov	3	9	33%	12% to 65%
Dec	3	4	too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Melocactus curvispinus 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. 41 of 77 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 51 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 amoenus Hoffmanns.
Cactus caesius (H.L.Wendl.) Britton & Rose
Cactus maxonii Rose
Cactus oaxacensis Britton & Rose
Cactus obtusipetalus Britton & Rose
Cactus ruestii (K.Schum.) Britton & Rose
Cactus salvador (L.Murillo) Britton & Rose
Melocactus amoenus Hoffmanns. ex Pfeiff.
Melocactus amoenus Hoffmanns.
Melocactus brongnartii Hildm.
Melocactus caesius H.L.Wendl.
Melocactus caesius subsp. lobelii (Valck.Sur.) Guiggi
Melocactus caesius var. griseus (H.L.Wendl. ex Miq.) C.F.Först.
Melocactus cephalenoplus Lem.
Melocactus cephalonoplus Lem. ex C.F.Först.
Melocactus crassicostatus Lem.
Melocactus curvispinus f. caesius (H.L.Wendl.) N.P.Taylor
Melocactus curvispinus f. lobelii (Valck.Sur.) N.P.Taylor
Melocactus curvispinus subsp. cucutensis Xhonneux & Fern.Alonso
Melocactus curvispinus subsp. lobelii (Valck.Sur.) Fern.Alonso & Xhonneux
Melocactus curvispinus subsp. loboguerreroi (Cárdenas) Fern.Alonso & Xhonneux
Melocactus curvispinus subsp. obtusipetalus (Lem.) Xhonneux & Fern.Alonso
Melocactus curvispinus subsp. saravianus Fern.Alonso & Xhonneux
Melocactus dawsonii Bravo

and 27 more.

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.
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.