Acanthocephala

Acanthocephala Backeb. ()
🌵 Author(s)
🌵 Published in Blätt. Kakteenf. 1938(6): [17; 7, 12, 24] (1938)
🌵 Type Echinocactus graessneri
Etymology

Greek akantha ‘spine’ + Greek kephalÄ“ ‘head’. Based on Notocactus subgen. Acanthocephalus Backeb. (Kaktus-ABC [Backeb. & Knuth]: 68. 1936). For the “fine spines” in the center of the plant, which distinguished the subgenus from Notocactus subgen. Gymnocephalus (Greek gymnos ‘naked’; “[c]enter of the plant […] without wool”) and Notocactus subgen. Eriocephalus (Greek erion ‘wool’; “wool in the top”).

Backeberg changed the name from Acanthocephalus to Acanthocephala to avoid homonymy with Acanthocephalus Kar. & Kir. (1842, Asteraceae) (Backeberg, Cactaceae 3: 1576. 1959). This was correct under the 1935 Cambridge Rules of botanical nomenclature (art. 70: “When the difference between two generic names lies in the termination, these names must be regarded as distinct, even though differing by one letter only”), but in 1942 Backeberg, who was led to believe by Krainz that the two names were homonyms after all, published the replacement name Brasilicactus, which was widely adopted instead of Acanthocephala.

A proposal to conserve Brasilicactus over Acanthocephala (Doweld in Taxon 49(3): 564-565. 2000) was unanimously rejected (Taxon 54(4): 1096. 2005).


How to cite

Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2023 Dec 18). Acanthocephala. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/Acanthocephala