| 🌵 Author(s) | Joseph Nelson RoseNathaniel Lord Britton | 🌵 Published in | Cactaceae (Britton & Rose) 2: 134 (1920) |
Latin Pachanoi genitive (possessive) form of Pachanoüs, latinization of Pachano. Named for Prof. Abelardo Pachano of the Quinta Normal de Agricultura in Ambato, Ecuador, “who accompanied Dr. Rose in 1918 on his travels in the high Andes of Ecuador” (Britton & Rose), where he collected the species together with J.N. Rose and George Rose.
The species is known locally as cactus de San Pedro ‘Saint Peter’s cactus’. David Yetman (The Great Cacti: Ethnobotany & Biogeography: 222. 2007): “Legend had it that the Christian priests sent into the Andes by the conquering Spaniards condemned the ceremonial use of the catus and forbade its cultivation. […] The indigenous people responded by honoring the cactus with the name San Pedro, hoping that by invoking the name of the supposed founder of Catholicism, they might assuage the clerics’ stern opposition to the ritual consumption of the plant. Another explanation for the name is that the cactus was like St. Peter, authorizing admission to heavenly visions.”
See also Trichocereus macrogonus subsp. sanpedro.
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2023 Dec 04). Trichocereus pachanoi. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/trichocereus-pachanoi