Cereus hexagonus (L.)Mill.

LADY-OF-THE-NIGHT CACTUS

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This arborescent cactus is commonly cultivated in Florida and the West Indies, and native to northern South America. It is often misidentified as C. repandus, a species with much shorter flowers (5-11 cm long) (Britton & Rose 1920:17-18). The name C. lepidotus might possibly be more applicable to this species here, such that C. hexagonus could be misapplied here (Taylor & Zappi 2019). This species is only weakly distinguished from C. jamacuru (native to eastern Brazil), which tends to have more numerous spines, often robust and long, with stout protruding areoles. Another similar species is C. hildmannianus (native to southern Brazil to eastern Argentina), which tends to have stout areoles with fewer, somewhat short spines, outer tepals often reddish (vs. reddish to more greenish tepals in the other species), and fruit yellow to red, splitting from the apex (vs. red fruits often a lateral split in the other species). The name Cereus peruvianus is widely misapplied, but it is currently treated as a synonym of C. repandus (see Hunt & Taylor 1992).

Not Native

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