
Cactaceae FAMILY Least Concern
Acanthocereus tetragonus
Acanthocereus tetragonus
Edibility
3/5
Medicinal
1/5
Safety & Hazards
None known
Cultivation Details
HabitEvergreen Tree
Growth—
Acanthocereus tetragonus is a plant of the arid tropics and subtropics. Grows in humus-poor, sandy, well drained soils in a sunny position. Prefers a pH in the range 6 - 7.5[1]. The white flowers open overnight[2, 3].
Propagation
Seed - Cite as: Tropical Plants Database, Ken Fern. tropical.theferns.info. 2026-02-19. <tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Acanthocereus+tetragonus>
Pollinators
Hawkmoths
References
- [1]The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. 1992. — Huxley. A. · MacMillan Press · 1992 · ISBN 0-333-47494-5 ↩︎Excellent and very comprehensive, though it contains a number of silly mistakes. Readable yet also very detailed.
- [2]IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — http://www.iucnredlist.org/ ↩︎A list of plants under threat and facing possible extinction, usually with brief details of the threats and information on habitat.
- [3]The Cactus Family — Anderson E.F. · Timber Press; Portland, Oregon · 2001 · ISBN 0-88192-498-9 ↩︎An excellent work, giving botanical descriptions of virtually all the cacti, together with their range (but not their habitats) and sometimes also a photo. it also contains a long chapter detailing the many uses of cacti and another on cultivation..
- [4]Dictionary of Economic Plants. — Uphof. J. C. Th. · Weinheim · 1959 · ISBN - ↩︎An excellent and very comprehensive guide but it only gives very short descriptions of the uses without any details of how to utilize the plants. Not for the casual reader.
- [5]Las Cactáceae de Guatemala — Véliz M.E. · Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala · 2008 · ISBN 99922-2-551-3 ↩︎
- [6]Flora of N. America — http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/fna/ ↩︎An on-line version of the flora with an excellent description of the plant including a brief mention of plant uses.
- [7]Cornucopia II — Facciola. S. · Kampong Publications, California. · 1998 · ISBN 0-9628087-2-5 ↩︎The second edition of an excellent guide to the edible uses of plants, though it does not give any details of cultivation etc.
- [8]Cacti Biology and Uses — Nobel, Park S. (Editor) · University of California Press; Berkeley, California · 2002 · ISBN 0-520-23157-0 ↩︎A lot of information about the uses and cultivation of Cacti native to central Mexico
- [9]Food Plants in the Americas: A Survey of the Domesticated, Cultivated, and Wild Plants Used for Human Food in North, — Kermath B.M.; Bennett B.C.' Pulsipher L.M. · 2014 ↩︎A pre-publication draft of an amazing, on-going work first started in 1985. It contains information on more than 3,900 taxa from the Americas - from Arctic regions to the Tropics