Acanthocereus tetragonus
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. [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. [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. [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. [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. [5]Las Cactáceae de Guatemala — Véliz M.E. · Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala · 2008 · ISBN 99922-2-551-3 ↩︎
  6. [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. [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. [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. [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