Pelecyphora sneedii (column foxtail cactus)

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Pelecyphora sneedii, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. a Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-04-18 / obs. 123283712

Pelecyphora sneedii, photographed by Matt Berger — fig. b Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 116517391

Pelecyphora sneedii, photographed by Kyle M. Simpson — fig. c Kyle M. Simpson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 33586774

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 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pelecyphora sneedii, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northeast	MXE
New Mexico	NWM
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 60 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	2.6 °C	5.0 °C	6.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	33.3 °C	36.1 °C	37.7 °C
Annual rainfall	267 mm	325 mm	380 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	26 mm	33 mm	40 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 60 research-grade observations of Pelecyphora sneedii 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 31 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.

Coryphantha albicolumnaria (Hester) Zimmerman
Coryphantha orcuttii (Boed.) Zimmerman
Coryphantha organensis Zimmerman
Coryphantha sneedii (Britton & Rose) A.Berger
Coryphantha sneedii var. albicolumnaria (Hester) A.D.Zimmerman
Coryphantha sneedii var. guadalupensis (S.Brack & K.D.Heil) A.D.Zimmerman
Coryphantha sneedii var. leei (Rose) L.D.Benson
Coryphantha sneedii var. orcuttii (Boed.) Gorelick
Coryphantha strobiliformis var. orcuttii (Boed.) L.D.Benson
Escobaria albicolumnaria Hester
Escobaria guadalupensis S.Brack & K.D.Heil
Escobaria leei Rose ex Boed.
Escobaria orcuttii Boed.
Escobaria orcuttii var. koenigii Castetter, P.Pierce & K.H.Schwer.
Escobaria orcuttii var. macraxina Castetter, P.Pierce & K.H.Schwer.
Escobaria organensis (Zimmerman) Castetter, P.Pierce & K.H.Schwer.
Escobaria sandbergii Castetter, P.Pierce & K.H.Schwer.
Escobaria sneedii Britton & Rose
Escobaria sneedii subsp. albicolumnaria (Hester) A.M.Powell
Escobaria sneedii subsp. albicolumnaria (Hester) Lüthy
Escobaria sneedii subsp. guadalupensis (S.Brack & K.D.Heil) A.M.Powell
Escobaria sneedii subsp. leei (Rose ex Boed.) D.R.Hunt
Escobaria sneedii subsp. orcuttii (Boed.) Lüthy
Escobaria sneedii subsp. organensis (Zimmerman) Lüthy

and 7 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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol ESAL. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.