Stenocereus thurberi(Engelm.) Buxb.

organ pipe cactus

WFO wfo-0001287223 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. a Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-17 / obs. 183336720
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. b Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179671492
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. c Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179670517
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. d Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179333396
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. e Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179222799
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. f Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179222892
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. g Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178867607
Stenocereus thurberi, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. h Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179223319

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 96 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 96 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

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.

  • Cereus thurberi Engelm.
  • Cereus thurberi var. littoralis K.Brandegee
  • Cereus thurberi var. monstrosus Dams
  • Glandulicereus thurberi (Engelm.) Guiggi
  • Glandulicereus thurberi subsp. littoralis (K.Brandegee) Guiggi
  • Lemaireocereus littoralis (K.Brandegee) Gates
  • Lemaireocereus thurberi (Engelm.) Britton & Rose
  • Lemaireocereus thurberi var. littoralis (K.Brandegee) G.E.Linds.
  • Marshallocereus thurberi (Engelm.) Backeb.
  • Marshallocereus thurberi var. littoralis (K.Brandegee) Backeb.
  • Neolemaireocereus thurberi (Engelm.) Backeb.
  • Pilocereus thurberi Engelm. ex Rümpler
  • Rathbunia thurberi (Engelm.) P.V.Heath
  • Rathbunia thurberi f. cristata P.V.Heath
  • Rathbunia thurberi f. dichotoma P.V.Heath
  • Rathbunia thurberi var. littoralis (K.Brandegee) P.V.Heath
  • Stenocereus littoralis (K.Brandegee) L.W.Lenz
  • Stenocereus thurberi f. cristatus (P.V.Heath) P.V.Heath
  • Stenocereus thurberi f. dichotomus (P.V.Heath) P.V.Heath
  • Stenocereus thurberi var. littoralis (K.Brandegee) Bravo

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.