Said to commemorate Prince Eugéne de Bauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg (1781–1824), son of Josephine, the first of Napoleon’s consorts.
Body solitary or occasionally clustering, spherical to shortly cylindrical mostly low-growing but occasionally over 50 cm tall. Rootstock fleshy. Tubercles 10-12 cm long, waxy blue, triangular in section. Spines to 15 cm long, papery, flattened. Flowers on the lower side of the spine-bearing areoles near the body apex, yellow, fragrant; summer. Fruit ovoid to oblong to 3 cm long, thick-walled, dry, splitting at the base.
Grown as the sole species of the genus, L. principis Hook.
Unique in the unusual long, triangular tubercles with papery spines at the tip; superficially similar to Agave.
1 species from Central N Mexico.
Source: (1997). Cactaceae. 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.
