Stephen Forbes
Greek echinos—hedgehog, cereus—prickly plant.
Erect, prostrate or pendulous, solitary or clustered cacti. Sterile and flowering areoles with similar spines. Flowers solitary, typically large, funnel-shaped pinkish, purplish or reddish, occasionally yellow, tube and ovary spiny, stigma lobes green; spring and summer. Fruit indehiscent or splitting on one side, thin-skinned, commonly pulpy; seeds black, warty.
Offsets and flowers bursting through the body surface; green stamens; pericarpel and tube spiny.
45 species native to Mexico and SW USA.
Taylor (1985).
Source: (1997). Echinocereus. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.