| 🌵 Author(s) | Joseph Nelson RoseNathaniel Lord Britton |
| 🌵 Basionym | Echinocactus bicolor (1848) |
| 🌵 Basionym author(s) | Louis Pfeiffer |
Latin bĭcŏlor ‘two-colored’. A name coined by Henri Galeotti and published by Pfeiffer, who assumed it referred to “the unique arrangement of the colors of the flower”, i.e. the strong contrast between the “purple red” petals and the “light green” floral tube. Pfeiffer based his description of the flower on a drawing: “The flower is handsome, purple-red, the scales of the tube large, light green, but the transition between the floral tube and the corolla in the original drawing seems to be too sharp, unless it is precisely this peculiarity on which the name Galeotti gave the plant is based” (“Die Blume ist ansehnlich, purpurroth, die Schuppen der Röhre gross, hellgrün, doch scheint der Uebergang zwischen der Röhre und der Blumenkrone in der Originalzeichnung zu sehr abstechend gehalten zu sein, wenn nicht etwa gerade auf diese Eigenthümlichkeit der von Galeotti der Pflanze gegebene Name sich gründet”).
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2022 Feb 05). Thelocactus bicolor. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/thelocactus-bicolor