Bridgesii

Eileen

Grown hereWell documented

Eileen is an Australian distributed by the late Ed Stroud and named after Stroud's mother, in whose garden the grew. It stands out twice over: the stems are unusually thick for a bridgesii, and where most of the species mark and in damp conditions this one tolerates heavy watering, sprinklers and wet winters in a free-draining mix. Its spines are short and thin, often one to an , and it sometimes drops into a four-ribbed form. Whether the thickness points to hybrid ancestry is still speculation.

very thick stems
single short spines
rot resistant
four-rib sections

BridgesiiNamed clone: One original plant and every cutting taken from it, given a name by a grower.

Of the 23 things this page says, 3 are things several independent sources agree on, 7 name who reports them and 13 are marked as something we cannot confirm. Where a line is not settled, it says so underneath.

Updated 30 Aug 2026Added 23 Aug 2026

Species

Trichocereus bridgesii

syn. Echinopsis lageniformis

Filed under Bridgesii

Parents

Not recorded

No source names a mother or a father for this one.

Origin

Named for Eileen, the mother of grower Ed Stroud, in whose garden the mother plant stood.

no source says whether it is seed-grown or a cutting line

In the yard

1 available now

cutting · $120.00

Family line

tap any name to visit it

Eileenyou are herePsycho0 × Eileen

Every ring is that plant’s own seal, in its family’s colour — open one to keep going.

Each plant wears its own seal here, coloured by its family — so a cross shows which side brought what before you read a name. A dashed ring is a plant with no page here yet, and a wire is only ever drawn from a parent somebody wrote down. Children are worked out from the other entries rather than stored on this one, so recording a cross anywhere lights it up on both plants.

The line matters as much as the box. A dashed line is a cross we can report but cannot confirm. Every cross drawn here is at that weakest reading, which is the true state of this plant's record.

Drawn 3 generations each way. Everything our sources record for this plant is in the drawing; the family stops there, not the tree.

Not a recorded , but the mother plant's unusual thickness has led some growers to suspect hybrid ancestry. The wiki page marks that as unconfirmed.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The longer version

The late Ed Stroud, a well-known figure in the Shaman Australis Botanicals community, grew it and passed it on.Reported, but not confirmed.

The mother plant grew in the garden of Stroud's mother, Eileen, whose name the carries.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

A specialist reference groups it with the Australian bridgesii clone Bruce and suspects the two came out of related seed.Reported, but not confirmed.

Australia's national biodiversity index carries Trichocereus as an accepted genus, with no species concepts beneath it and no synonyms at all.Reported by one source, and not corroborated anywhere else.So an Australian clone has no herbarium or census record to be checked against, and an Australian origin recorded here will always rest on collections and growers rather than on an institution.Reported, but not confirmed.

Two accounts of the plant's build do not match. The community wiki records stems exceptionally thick for a bridgesii; the specialist reference calls it a fairly ordinary bridgesii apart from the spines. Both stay on the record.Reported, but not confirmed.

They disagree on the spine count too, which matters because both sources use to tell the clone apart. The wiki records often one spine to an areole; the reference gives paired spines as the identifying feature.Reported, but not confirmed.

The reference adds that it rarely flowers for most Australian growers, though flowering and deliberate breeding with it have both been reported.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Where the name comes from

The clone comes from Australia. A nursery selling it places the origin more precisely, at Colac in Victoria.

Character

A bar is drawn only where one of the lines below states it — never from the species, never from a photograph.

slow and steady to fast grower: this one leans towards fast grower, read from the growth line below.
nearly smooth to heavily spined: this one leans towards nearly smooth, read from the spines line below.
Not documented yet.

Skin: Blue-green.Checked and judged by our house botanist; no outside source states it. Blue-green epidermis is common and unremarkable across Trichocereus.
Ribs: It sometimes drops into a four-ribbed form growers call four winds.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Rib counts in this genus are unstable and dropping to four ribs is a normal variation.
Spines: Short, thin, and often just one to an areole.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Short, thin, solitary areole spines are well within the spination range the genus shows.A specialist reference independently singles the spination out as unusual for the species.Reported, but not confirmed.
Growth habit: Vigorous and columnar.Checked and judged by our house botanist; no outside source states it. Vigorous columnar growth is the default habit for the genus.Exceptionally thick stems for a bridgesii.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Stem thickness varies widely between clones, so an unusually thick one is plausible.
Notes: One of the most frequently listed names on the sales subreddit, and offered there by a wide spread of different sellers rather than one or two.Reported, but not confirmed.Unlike most bridgesii it is celebrated for shrugging off wet conditions, coping with heavy watering, overhead sprinklers and wet cold-climate winters when grown in a free-draining mix; it is described as thirsty and responsive to regular feeding.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Clones vary in rot tolerance, and heavy watering and feeding in a free-draining mix is plausible for a vigorous bridgesii.

What the sources say

Our sources record no origin story for this name — only how often it changes hands.Reported, but not confirmed.Growers speculate the clone might be a hybrid instead of a pure bridgesii because the mother plant was so thick; the wiki page says this is unconfirmed and may simply be environmental.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.Our own notes record that our earlier sources had no origin story for Eileen at all; the wiki now supplies one.Reported, but not confirmed.

Eileen growing in the yard — Our own plant, in the yard. 7 pictures of it on its collection page.

Filed under the same family, Bridgesii. The better-documented ones come first.

Keep exploring

Cultivar histories in this hobby are passed between growers; where sources disagree we say so rather than pick a side.

Learned from

The label this plant arrived with, as recorded in our own catalogue
sanpedrocact.us, the community Trichocereus wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0)
trichocereus.net, a specialist Trichocereus reference written clone by clone
The Atlas of Living Australia, Australia's national biodiversity index
Our own reading of the facts above, not a claim any source makes
Cactus Affinity, a licensed California nursery at Chico, on the plants it grows and sells
r/sanpedrocactusforsale, where growers list plants for sale

Links go to the channel, the subreddit or the front page of a site — never to one video, one post or somebody else’s product page. Nothing above is copied from any of them: every entry is written fresh from a fact list, with the source recorded against each fact as it went in.

Written from scratch off a cited fact list, never copied. Learned from the sanpedrocact.us community wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0), @sanpedromastery6262 and @IMDAVESBUD on YouTube, r/sanpedrocactus and medicactus.com's buyer guides, then checked against university extension horticulture, botanical gardens, cactus and succulent societies and the published botanical record. I will not name a plant from a photograph.

Every source behind this site →

At a glance