A genus of two species and native to southwestern United States and central and northern Mexico, Lophophora belongs in the tribe Cereeae, subtribe Echinocacteinae, a subtribe of approximately twenty-eight genera.
Lophophora williamsii (Lem.) Coulter in Contrib. U.S. Nat. Herb. 3 (1894) 131.
Plant simple, rarely caespitose, normally unicephalous but becoming polycephalous with age or injury, spineless, vey succulent, dull bluish or greyish green; roots napiform, usually 8-11 cm long. Crowns globular, top-shaped, or somewhat flattened, 2-8 (usually 5-6) cm in diameter, with 7-13 (rarely fewer or more) broad, rounded, straight, or spiralled, sometimes irregular and indistinct, with transverse furrows forming more or less regular, polyhedral tubercles; areolas round, flat, bearing flowers only when young, with tuft of long erect, matted, wooly hairs. Flowers solitary, borne at umbilicate centre of crown, each surrounded by a mass of long hairs, usually pale pink (rarely whitish), rotate-campanulate, 1.5-2.5 cm across when open; outer perianth segments and scales ventrally greenish, stigma-lobes 5-7, linear, pink, ovary naked. Fruit club-shaped, red to pinkish, 2 cm long or shorter. Seeds 1 cm in diameter, with broad basal hilum, tuberculate-roughened.
Known from central Mexico north to southern Texas and New Mexico, growing isolated or in groups usually in calcareous deserts, on rocky slopes, or in dried river beds.
The genus Trichocereus (trichos = hair; cereus = columnar cacti; refers to the hairy floral tube), a segregate from Cereus, comprises some forty seven species of subtropical and temperate areas of South America, especially in the Andean regions. Specifically the genus is distributed in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, with 13 species from Peru. A total of over twenty-five species of Trichocereus have revealed the presence of alkaloids.
Trichocereus Pachanoi Britton et Rose, The Cactaceae 2 (1920) 134, t. 196.
Plant 3-6 meters in height and 10 cm in diameter. Branches strict, glaucous when young, dark green in age. Ribs 6-8, basally broad, obtuse, with deep horizontal depression above areole. Spines few, 3-7, often not present, unequal, up to 1-2 cm long, brownish. Buds pointed. Flowers large, 19-23 cm long, borne near apex of branches night-blooming, very fragrant, outer perianth segments brownish red, inner segments white; filaments of staments long, greenish; style greenish below, white above; stigma lobes linear, yellowish; ovary black-pilose. Axis of scales on flower-tube and fruit with long black hairs.
This species of Trichocereus occurs in the Andean parts of Ecuador and Peru and probably in Bolivia, between 2,000 and 3,000 meters. T. pachanoi is cultivated in a much larger region than its natural habitat including the coastal regions of Peru where it is called "San Pedro". In the northern high mountains of Peru it is called "huachuma", in Bolivia and the southern Peruvian Andes it is named "achuma", and in Ecuador, "giganton" or "aguacolla". T. pachanoi is the principle ingredient of a potion called cimora, employed by folk-healers or curanderos.
Trichocereus Peruvianus Br. and R. is a branching, candelabra-like cactus species originally collected near Matucana in Peru.
