Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 9-11 (arid zones only)

Landscape Use: Textural, form and color accent, small to intermediate barrel cactus for xeric landscapes, desert display gardens, and containers.

Form & Character: Spherical to cylindrical, symmetrical, neat, clean, aggressive, dangerous, lonely, dry.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, succulent perennial, solitary stem, slow growth rate to 3-feet tall and 18-inches wide.

Foliage/Texture: Singular barrel stem, green to glaucous green, up to 20 ribs, areoles along ribs each containing from 4 to 15 radial spines, spines recurved, central spines (up to four), flattened, to 2-inches long, surrounded by up to 15 cylindrically-shaped marginal spines of similar to lesser length, all spines vary in color from white to reddish to grayish brown; very coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Flowers clustered at stem terminus, yellow or lavender; fruits oval, scaled to 1-inch long.

Seasonal Color: Like other barrel cacti, yellow or lavender flowers provide a subtle visual accent during late summer to early autumn after the summer North American monsoon season.

Temperature: Tolerant of Phoenix winter cold and summer heat (with protection from direct summer western sun).

Light: In Phoenix, provide some shade from direct western summer sun.

Soil: Well-drained soil is required.

Watering: None after becoming established in the landscape.

A case study in landscape (un)sustainability: Here are young devil's tongue barrel cacti that were planted during late 2022 in full sun surrounded by rip rap rock as a surface mulch and heavily irrigated within an upscale central Arizona municipality's convention center plaza landscape. Predictably, these little jewels were sunscalded during the summer of 2023, and by the winter of 2023/24 they were looking like they had been left in the oven a little too long. The take home messages?

There are two:

• Knowledge of a plant's environmental preferences and tolerances must be prominently integrated into the design process of selecting the right plant taxon for a site.
• Applying more water is not always the right or best answer to solving your landscape plant problems.

Pruning: None

Propagation: Seed

Disease and Pests: Root rot in poorly drained soils.

Additional comments: With some western sun protection, devil's tongue barrel cactus can be a wonderfully odd, tough, interesting and very low maintenance barrel cactus for desert rock and container gardens and other xeric-managed landscapes in the lower Sonoran Desert.

There are three recognized subspecies: