Oreocereus hempelianus(Gürke) D.R.Hunt

WFO wfo-0001288015 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. a cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-01-12 / obs. 66748458
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. b cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66748841
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. c cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66746567
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. d cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66746899
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. e cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66743161
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. f cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 34592611
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by cstobie
fig. g cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 20335896
Oreocereus hempelianus, photographed by Jorge Herreros de Lartundo
fig. h Jorge Herreros de Lartundo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 118883296

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 Oreocereus hempelianus is native: Chile North, Peru Chile NorthPeru
Native distribution of Oreocereus hempelianus, 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
Chile North CLN SOUTHERN AMERICA
Peru PER

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 59 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.6 °C 5.6 °C 9.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.7 °C 18.5 °C 22.6 °C
Annual rainfall 112 mm 272 mm 473 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 6 mm 10 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 59 research-grade observations of Oreocereus hempelianus 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 20 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.

  • Arequipa erectocylindrica Rauh & Backeb.
  • Arequipa hempeliana (Gürke) Oehme
  • Arequipa rettigii (Quehl) Oehme
  • Arequipa rettigii var. borealis F.Ritter
  • Arequipa rettigii var. erectocylindrica (Rauh & Backeb.) Krainz
  • Arequipa soehrensii Backeb.
  • Arequipa spinosissima F.Ritter
  • Arequipa weingartiana Backeb.
  • Arequipa weingartiana var. carminanthema Backeb.
  • Arequipiopsis hempeliana (Gürke) Kreuz. & Buining
  • Arequipiopsis rettigii (Quehl) Kreuz. & Buining
  • Arequipiopsis soehrensii Kreuz.
  • Arequipiopsis weingartiana (Backeb.) Kreuz. & Buining
  • Borzicactus hempelianus (Gürke) Donald
  • Borzicactus hempelianus var. rettigii (Quehl) Donald
  • Borzicactus hempelianus var. spinosissimus (F.Ritter) Donald
  • Borzicactus hempelianus var. weingartianus (Backeb.) Donald
  • Echinocactus rettigii Quehl
  • Echinopsis hempeliana Gürke
  • Oreocereus rettigii (Quehl) Buxb.

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.