Varieties and forms

No genus of cacti this small has been split and renamed as often as Ariocarpus. Botanists named close to a hundred varieties, subspecies, forms and stand-alone species across the group. Modern taxonomy folds almost all of them back into seven variable species, so today they survive as synonyms, the old names you still meet on plant labels and in catalogs.

Below is the full set, 94 published names in all, grouped under the accepted species each one belongs to. Status follows POWO. Just one infraspecific name is still accepted in the whole genus: A. bravoanus subsp. hintonii, the small San Luis Potosí plant. Everything else here is a synonym. The cultivated oddities, crests and Godzilla and the rest, live on the Cultivars page.

A handful of these old names are still grown under their original labels; our companion site profiles the furfuraceus form of A. retusus, for one.