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Vascular Plants of California
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Echinocereus
HEDGEHOG CACTUS

Higher Taxonomy
Family: CactaceaeView DescriptionDichotomous Key

Common Name: CACTUS FAMILY
Habit: Perennial herb, shrub, tree, generally fleshy. Stem: cylindric to spheric, or flat; surface smooth, tubercled, or ribbed (grooved); nodal areoles bearing flowers. Leaf: generally 0 or early-deciduous, flat to +- cylindric. Spines: areoles generally with central, radial spines, occasionally with glochids. Flower: generally 1 per areole, bisexual [unisexual], sessile, radial [bilateral]; perianth parts generally many [5], scale-like to petal-like; stamens many; ovary inferior [superior], style 1, stigma lobes generally several [many]. Fruit: dry to fleshy or juicy, indehiscent to variously dehiscent, spiny, scaly, or naked; tubercled or smooth. Seed: generally many, occasionally 0--few.
Genera In Family: +- 125 genera, +- 1800 species: America (especially deserts), Africa; many cultivated, some edible. Note: Spines smaller, fewer (0) in shade forms; yellow spines blacken in age. Introduced species increasingly escape cultivation. Hybridization common in some genera. Taxa of Escobaria in TJM (1993) moved to Coryphantha.
eFlora Treatment Author: Bruce D. Parfitt, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Bruce D. Parfitt, Douglas H. Goldman, Bruce G. Baldwin, Thomas J. Rosatti.
Echinocereus
Habit: Generally erect to ascending, [sprawling, pendent, or decumbent], branched or not, branches generally few--500, occasionally in dense mounds. Stem: [2]5--60[200] cm, (1)4--15 cm diam, spheric to long-cylindric, soft, not regularly segmented; ribs prominent, 4--13[26], tubercles +- 0 along rib-crests. Spines: [0]4--55 per areole, < 2 mm diam, needle- to dagger-like, glabrous to puberulent, straight, curved, or curly; central spines (0)1--6(9). Flower: lateral, near distal margin of spine cluster; perianth purple to lavender, orange, or red [yellow or green]; ovary glabrous, spiny, scales minute. Fruit: spheric to obovoid, indehiscent or splitting laterally, densely spiny, spine clusters deciduous. Seed: 0.8--2 mm, obovoid to +- spheric, dull, wrinkled or tubercled, generally black.
Species In Genus: 49 species: southwestern United States, Mexico. Etymology: (Greek: hedgehog + Cereus)
Jepson eFlora Author: Bruce D. Parfitt
Reference: Taylor 1985 The Genus Echinocereus. Timber Press
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)
Key to Echinocereus

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Citation for this treatment: Bruce D. Parfitt 2012, Echinocereus, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, /eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=9220, accessed on February 26, 2020.

Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2020, Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on February 26, 2020.