Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Argentina Northeast | AGE | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Argentina Northwest | AGW |
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 349 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 1.7 °C | 5.1 °C | 8.7 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 25.5 °C | 30.5 °C | 34.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 137 mm | 291 mm | 994 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 5 mm | 22 mm | 57 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 349 research-grade observations of Tephrocactus articulatus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 40 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 articulatus Pfeiff.
- Cereus polymorphus C.F.Först.
- Cereus syringacanthus Pfeiff.
- Cereus syringscanthus Pfeiff.
- Opuntia andicola var. fulvispina Lem.
- Opuntia articulata (Pfeiff.) D.R.Hunt
- Opuntia calva Lem.
- Opuntia diademata Lem.
- Opuntia diademata f. calva (Lem.) Schelle
- Opuntia diademata var. calva (Lem.) F.A.C.Weber ex K.Schum.
- Opuntia diademata var. inermis Speg.
- Opuntia diademata var. polyacantha Speg.
- Opuntia glomerata f. papyracantha (Phil.) Castell.
- Opuntia glomerata var. calva (Lem.) G.D.Rowley
- Opuntia glomerata var. inermis (Speg.) G.D.Rowley
- Opuntia glomerata var. polycantha (Speg.) G.D.Rowley
- Opuntia papyracantha Phil.
- Opuntia polymorpha Pfeiff.
- Opuntia strobiliformis A.Berger
- Opuntia syringacantha Pfeiff. ex C.F.Först.
- Opuntia turpinii Lem.
- Opuntia turpinii var. polymorpha Salm-Dyck
- Tephrocactus articulatus f. papyracanthus (Phil.) Guiggi & Verloove
- Tephrocactus articulatus f. syringacanthus (Pfeiff.) F.Ritter
and 16 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.