Trichocereinae Britton & Rose (1920)

Walter, Helmut E. & Guerrero, Pablo C., 2022, Towards a unified taxonomic catalogue for the Chilean cacti: assembling molecular systematics and classical taxonomy, Phytotaxa 550 (2), pp. 79-98 : 95

Subtribe Trichocereinae Britton & Rose (1920) :

—Most of the genera in Subtribe Trichocereine are also found in the traditional concept “Trichocereae” and the same applies to all the five Chilean genera [ Haageocereus Backeb. , Leucostele Backeb. , Lobivia Britton & Rose, Oreocereus (A.Berger) Riccob., and Soehrensia Backeb. ] in the Subtribe Trichocereinae . Based on DNA sequences and a broad sampling, Schlumperger & Renner (2012) showed that the large genus Echinopsis Zucc. is polyphyletic. Consequently, many former segregate genera were reinstalled, and the names of the Chilean taxa needed to be changed from Echinopsis s.l. into Leucostele Backeb. , Lobivia Britton & Rose, and Soehrensia Backeb. (Schlumpberger 2012) . Hunt (2012, 2016, see Table 2 ), accepted Schlumperger’s concept as “alternative”, while Rodríguez et al. (2018) still upheld the Echinopsis s.l. concept.

Concerning the genus Leucostele , the old name Cactus coquimbanus Mol. has recently been rejected for being ambiguous ( Eggli & Walter 2012) and Wilson (2016). Consequently, all combinations using this basionym must be abandoned. Among them is “ Leucostele coquimbana (Mol.) Schlumpb. ”.A new combination of Cereus nigripilis Phil. , which represents the shrubby columnar plants occurring along the coast from the Coquimbo- to the Atacama Region was recently proposed [ Leucostele nigripilis (Phil.) P.C. Guerrero & Helmut Walter (see Guerrero & Walter 2019 and Table 2 )]. Several new taxa in the genus Leucostele were also recently proposed in different journals. As none of them had been included in the sampling of a molecular-based study, we decided not to accept them as long as they are supported by molecular phylogenies: L. faundezii (Albesiano) Schlumpb. , L. pectinifera (Albesiano) Schlumpb. , and L. undulosa (Albesiano) Schlumpb. ( Korotkova et al. 2021) .