Echinopsis

Echinopsis Zucc. (1837)

🌵 Author(s)	Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini
🌵 Type	Echinopsis eyriesii

Etymology

Greek echinos ‘hedgehog’ + Greek –opsis ‘looking like’. For the globose, spiny plant bodies. Zuccarini created this genus for the so called Cerei globosi ‘globose Cerei’, which he considered to be intermediate between Echinocactus and Cereus (cf. Echinocereus).

In 1839 Charles Lemaire published the replacement name Echinonyctanthus because he considered Echinopsis too similar to Echinops L., a genus in the family Asteraceae.