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Acanthocereus tetragonus
Also called Barbed-wire cactus, Cactus, Sword Pear
Acanthocereus tetragonus is a spiny, columnar cactus from the Caribbean and southern Florida that can grow several metres tall and form thickets, with a miniature cultivar (fairy castle cactus) grown as a houseplant. Give it full sun, sharp drainage and little water.
Acanthocereus tetragonus is a species of cactus that is native to Florida and the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the United States, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. The species is invasive in New Caledonia. Common names include night-blooming cereus, barbed-wire cactus, sword-pear, dildo cactus, triangle cactus, and Órgano-alado de pitaya (Spanish). The miniature cultivar is known as fairy castle cactus. It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 as Cactus tetragonus but was moved to the genus Acanthocereus in 1938 by Pieter Wagenaar Hummelinck.
Young stems of the barbed-wire cactus can be eaten as a vegetable either cooked or raw, while the fruits are edible and sweet. It is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental outdoors. It is sometimes planted as a living fence.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Acanthocereus tetragonus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
