Pelecyphora tuberculosa(Engelm.) D.Aquino & Dan.Sánchez

whitecolumn foxtail cactus

WFO wfo-0001302767 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. a Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-16 / obs. 199914673
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. b CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182736475
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. c CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180782988
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. d CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180775920
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. e CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180774079
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. f CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180463095
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. g CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180459590
Pelecyphora tuberculosa, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. h Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179788884

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
03860495
Filed as
Mammillaria strobiliformis Engelm.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
C. G. Pringle 1885-04
Origin
MX
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 4 botanical countries

Regions where Pelecyphora tuberculosa is native: Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, New Mexico, Texas Mexico NortheastMexico NorthwestNew MexicoTexas
Native distribution of Pelecyphora tuberculosa, 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 Northwest MXN
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 1,999 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.2 °C 1.1 °C 7.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 30.3 °C 33.4 °C 36.5 °C
Annual rainfall 225 mm 329 mm 495 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 22 mm 33 mm 61 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,999 research-grade observations of Pelecyphora tuberculosa 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 26 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 tuberculosus (Engelm.) Kuntze
  • Coryphantha dasyacantha var. varicolor (Tiegel) L.D.Benson
  • Coryphantha strobiliformis var. durispina (Quehl) L.D.Benson
  • Coryphantha tuberculosa (Engelm.) A.Berger
  • Coryphantha tuberculosa (Engelm.) Orcutt
  • Coryphantha tuberculosa var. varicolor (Tiegel) A.D.Zimmerman
  • Coryphantha varicolor Tiegel
  • Escobaria dasyacantha var. varicolor (Tiegel) D.R.Hunt
  • Escobaria strobiliformis subsp. sisperai Halda & Sladk.
  • Escobaria strobiliformis var. durispina (Quehl) Bravo
  • Escobaria tuberculosa (Engelm.) Britton & Rose
  • Escobaria tuberculosa subsp. tuberculosa
  • Escobaria tuberculosa subsp. varicolor (Tiegel) Lüthy
  • Escobaria tuberculosa var. durispina (Quehl) Børgesen
  • Escobaria tuberculosa var. pubescens (Quehl) Y.Itô
  • Escobaria tuberculosa var. varicolor (Tiegel) S.Brack & K.D.Heil
  • Escobaria varicolor Tiegel
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis Engelm.
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis f. durispina (Quehl) Schelle
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis f. pubescens (Quehl) Schelle
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis f. rufispina (Quehl) Schelle
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis var. durispina Quehl
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis var. pubescens Quehl
  • Mammillaria strobiliformis var. rufispina Quehl

and 2 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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol ESTU. public domain. 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.