Table Of ContentA FIELD GUIDE
x
Cacti of Te as
AND NEIGHBORING STATES
DEL WENIGER
Cacti of Texas
and Neighboring States
x
Cacti of Te as
AND NEIGHBORING STATES
A Field Guide by Del Weniger
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS AUSTIN
All rights reserved
Printed in Japan
First Edition, 1984
Requests for permission to reproduce mate-
rial from this work should be sent to Permis-
sions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819,
Austin, Texas 78713.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publica-
tion Data
Weniger, Del.
Cacti of Texas and neighboring states.
Includes indexes.
1. Cactus—Texas—Identification.
2. Botany—Texas. I. Title.
QK495.C11W36 1984
583.4709764 83-26015
ISBN 0-292-71085-2
ISBN 0-292-71063-1 (pbk.)
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction vii
What Is a Cactus? 1
Key to the Genera of the Cacti 6
Genus Echinocereus 9
Key to the Echinocerei 10
Genus Wilcoxia 79
Genus Peniocereus 82
Genus Acanthocereus 85
Genus Echinocactus 88
Key to the Echinocacti 91
Genus Lophophora 137
Genus Ariocarpus 142
Genus Pediocactus 146
Genus Epithelantha 152
Genus Mammillaria 155
Key to the Mammillarias 159
Genus Opuntia 228
Key to the Opuntias 231
Glossary 341
Index of Scientific Names 347
Index of Common Names 354
Acknowledgments
This book is made possible largely by
the contributions to Cacti of the South-
west. All acknowledgments listed there
thus apply here. I also wish to mention
the added help of Mr. Kenneth Heil.
The photographs of Echinocereus
kuenzleri and of Echinocactus whipplei
var. intermedius and var. heilii were
taken and contributed by him.
Introduction
This is a field guide. Its purpose is to make possible the identification of the
cacti growing in the five states covered. It therefore contains a distillation of
the descriptive material from my previous book, Cacti of the Southwest,
published by the University of Texas Press in 1970, as well as the photo-
graphs and keys from that book.
The lesser scope of this guide, together with the desire to make it small
enough for handy field use, has made it necessary to leave out the wealth of
historical and taxonomic information for which the earlier book was well
known. Anyone interested in those aspects of the cacti should refer to it.
It has proved very difficult to deal with the cacti without becoming en-
snared in the taxonomic confusion which exists concerning them. It has
been impossible to note here all the different names used for the various
forms, yet I desire to give the reader some reference from which to start in
tracing synonyms. Lyman Benson’s exhaustive treatment, The Cacti of the
United States and Canada, has appeared, and since it purports to be the
bible of cactology, I have included for each form any different name he has
chosen. Since his taxonomic notes are usually very complete, anyone who
wishes to pursue the matter further may trace out any synonyms through
them. I have included references to any new opinions published since my
earlier book which seem significant to me.
In the United States there has long been a tendency to break down the
treatment of cacti into state studies. States are artificial areas and their
boundaries have nothing to do with plant distribution, but it has been im-
possible to ignore them. The present study, however, includes all the forms
of cacti presently known to be growing in five states: Arkansas, Louisiana,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. These five states make up a unit much
more logically considered, cactuswise, than any one of them individually.
The cacti are listed by their recognized scientific names, immediately fol-
lowed (where such exist) by all of the common names by which the cactus is
known in various localities, including the Spanish and sometimes the In-
dian names. Spellings of these common names show the local variations
found in the literature.
Each entry contains a description, updated from the original one of the
species, the known range of natural distribution in rather general terms, a
discussion of unusual or interesting features, and a color photograph of the
plant, in most cases in bloom. More detailed information can be found in
my Cacti of the Southwest.
A few of the photographs were made in the plant’s natural location, but in
most cases this proved to be impractical. Most cacti bloom only a few days
out of the year, and it was obviously impossible to be in a canyon of the
Texas Big Bend on precisely the days when each cactus chose to bloom.
viii introduction
Much effort, therefore, has gone into the work of locating the various forms
in the wild, then bringing them in and growing them in such congenial en-
vironments that they have bloomed, so that they could be pictured at the
right moment. The soils and backgrounds visible in the pictures are, there-
fore, not usually the natural environments of the plants. In fact, the colors
of these have often been chosen to contrast with and make as clearly visible
as possible the spines and other characters of the cacti. This means that no
conclusion about the environments of these plants can be drawn from these
pictures. Unless otherwise stated, the photographs are from my own collec-
tion. Measurements given in the photograph captions are the plant body
sizes of the specific plants pictured and do not, unless otherwise stated, in-
clude flowers. In most cases this size is smaller than the maximum size
achieved by the species.
In organizing this presentation, one of the biggest problems was the delin-
eation of the genera. The widest possible range of opinions is held today by
the different authorities in the field on the limits of the genera in the Cac-
taceae. It seems that the present extent of the knowledge of the cacti does
not enable anyone to give as definite a list of cactus genera as can be made
for many other plant groups. There are several very different systems of gen-
era, each very logical in the light of a certain set of assumptions. The rea-
sons for my adopting a very conservative system are set forth in Cacti of the
Southwest.
Within the genera no attempt has been made to organize the species into
tribes or sections, since this sort of thing—as, for instance, various pro-
posals for the genus Opuntia—seems still to be based on conjecture, and I
find little newer and more solid evidence for any of the various contradic-
tory proposals already made.
