Echinocereus

Echinocereus Engelm. (1848)

🌵 Author(s)	George Engelmann
🌵 Published in	Mem. Tour N. Mexico [Wislizenus] 91 (1848)
🌵 Type	Echinocereus viridiflorus

Etymology

Latin ĕchīnus ‘sea-urchin, hedgehog’ + Cereus, the name of a genus of columnar cacti and a designation for columnar cacti in general. The name, like Echinopsis, indicates the “intermediate position between Echinocactus and Cereus” (Engelmann). It does not refer to “the spiny fruit in which Echinocereus is conspicuously different from the true Cereus” (Britton & Rose, Cactaceae 3: 3. 1922) or the (non-existent) similarity to a sea urchin (Helmut Genaust, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen. 3. Auflage. 1996).

Echinocereus is sometimes abbreviated as Ereus.