WikiBotanicals:Echinomastus

Echinomastus (spiny breast) gets its generic name from the Greek, meaning hedgehog, and from the Greek, meaning breast, referring to the spiny tubercles of the plant. We recognize 6 species, all from northern Mexico and the adjacent parts of the United States. They are closely interrelated.

Background
Plants small, globular or short-cylindric, ribbed, the ribs low, more or less spiraled, divided into definite tubercles; areoles bearing several acicular spines with or without stouter central ones; flowers central, medium-sized, borne at the spine-areoles, usually purple; fruit small, short-oblong, scaly, becoming dry, dehiscing by a basal opening; scales few, their axils naked; seed large, muricate, black, with a depressed ventral hilum.

This species resembles in size, form, and habit the species of Coryphantha much more than they do the species of Echinocactus or Ferocactus. This resemblance is strengthened by definite tubercles on the ribs. Schumann referred them all to Theiocactus, his very complex subgenus of Echinocacactus.

Species
E. erectocentrus (redspine fishhook cactus) Plants broadly ovoid to short-cylindric, 8 to 14 cm. high, sometimes 10 cm. broad, pale bluish green; ribs 21, somewhat oblique, very low, made up of closely set tubercles; radial spines 14, straight, terete, pale below, red above (in old dead plants dense and interwoven above but pectinate-appressed on lower part of plant); central spines 1 or 2, elongated, erect, slightly swollen at base, more conspicuous in dead than in living plants, usually ascending, one sometimes very short and porrect; flowers pinkish, 3 to 5 cm. long; stamens short, greenish yellow; style longer than the stamens, pale green; stigma-lobes 8, pinkish to deep red; ovary bearing a few ovate scarious scales. Type locality is near Benson, Arizona. Distribution includes Southeastern Arizona.

E. gautii (top cactus)

E. intertextus (white fishhook cactus) Simple, globular or nearly so, 2.5 to 10 cm. in diameter; ribs 13, somewhat acute, more or less divided into tubercles; areoles 5 to 6 mm. apart, somewhat elliptic; spines rigid, red with darker tips; radial spines 16 to 25, appressed, 8 to 15 mm. long, 3 or 4 of the upper radial spines white or nearly so, more slender than the others, almost bristle-like; central spines 4, subulate, 3 of them turned upward and similar to the radials, 10 to 18 mm. long, the other one very short, porrect; flowers 2.5 cm. long, nearly as broad as long, purplish; outer perianth-segments about 20, broadly ovate, white-margined; inner perianth-segments 20 to 25, oblong, mucronate; fruit nearly globular, 8 to 10 mm. in diameter, with a few scarious scales; seeds black, shining, 2 mm. in diameter.

E. johnsonii (Johnson's fishhook cactus, Johnson's beehive cactus) plant native to the southwestern United States from eastern California to Utah, where it can be found in desert scrub habitat. It produces an egg-shaped or cylindrical stem up to 25 centimeters tall by 10 wide. It is covered densely in straight and curving spines which may be up to 4 centimeters long and come in shades of yellow, gray, lavender, and pink or red, with up to 24 per areole. The cactus may have yellow or pink flowers; the species is sometimes divided into two varieties on the basis of flower color. Flowers are up to 8 centimeters wide. The scaly, fleshy fruit is up to 1.8 centimeters long.

E. mariposensis (Lloyd's fishhook cactus)

E. warnockii (Warnock's fishhook cactus)