🌵 Author(s) | Joseph Nelson RoseNathaniel Lord Britton | 🌵 Published in | Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. 12: 428 (1909) |
🌵 Basionym | Cereus subsect. Peniocereus (1905) |
🌵 Basionym author(s) | Alwin Berger | 🌵 Basionym published in | Rep. (Annual) Missouri Bot. Gard. 16: 77 (1905) |
🌵 Type | Peniocereus greggii |
Not explained by Berger. Greek pēnion ‘thread, spindle, pupa’ or Greek penia ‘poverty’ or Latin penis ‘tail, penis’ + Cereus, the name of a genus of columnar cacti and a designation for columnar cacti in general Britton & Rose (Cactaceae 2: 112. 1920): “The generic name is from the Greek, signifying thread-cereus.” For the slender stems or the long hairs in the axils of the upper scales of the flower tubes? Mottram (Cactician 4. 2014) (‘spindle, pupa’): “A reference to the shape of the fusiform tuberous root, thick but tapered at the top and bottom”? Helmut Genaust (Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen. 3. Auflage. 1996) gives a similar etymology. Eggli & Newton (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names. 2004) (‘poverty, tail, penis’): “for the long and slender stems, or for the small spines of some taxa”.
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2023 Jul 24). Peniocereus. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/peniocereus