Hybrid

Sun Goddess

Well documented

Sun Goddess is a nursery-trade , propagated at and sold under labels the collecting community does not trust. It clusters strongly, flowers large and white, and is vigorous enough to be popular as . What it actually is remains contested: records passed around the community suggest a of T. arboricola and T. purpureopilosus, while several experienced growers say it simply looks like T. candicans.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

clustering
large white flowers
short spines
grafting stock

HybridNursery selection: A selection a nursery or seed house put a name on and sold.

Of the 15 things this page says, 3 name who reports them and 12 are marked as something we cannot confirm. Where a line is not settled, it says so underneath.

Updated 24 Aug 2026Added 23 Aug 2026

Species

Not recorded

No botanical name on file. What the sources do say about its species is in the writing below.

Filed under Hybrid

Parents

Trichocereus arboricolaTrichocereus purpureopilosus

Seed parent: Trichocereus arboricola · Pollen parent: Trichocereus purpureopilosus

Origin

The clone is widely sold in the nursery trade and is mainly propagated by Altman Plants.

grown from seed

In the yard

Not in the yardAsk if you are after one

Family line

tap any name to visit it

Seed parentTrichocereus arboricolaPollen parentTrichocereus purpureopilosusSun Goddessyou are here

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.

Parentage is disputed. Nursery records circulated in the community put arboricola as the mother and purpureopilosus as the father; several growers instead say the plant simply looks like T. candicans.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The longer version

Species, as our sources record it: sold under generic labels and often associated with grandiflorus; community records point to a cross of T. arboricola and T. purpureopilosus.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

The arboricola-by-purpureopilosus reading rests on records traced to Bob Baker.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

One grower argues arboricola must be the mother because it is the only plant the note mentions, so the fruit that carried the seed was presumably on it.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Growers on the wiki page openly doubt the accuracy of the commercial labelling, which is why its identity is treated as unsettled.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Where the name comes from

The clone is widely sold in the nursery trade and is mainly propagated by Altman Plants.Reported, but not confirmed.

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: Bright green with a light cast.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Bright green skin with a light waxy bloom is well within the genus's usual range.
Ribs: Prominent and rounded, carrying large felted areoles.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Prominent rounded ribs bearing large felted areoles is a normal build for these columnar cacti.
Spines: Fairly short and needle-like, from light yellow through to brownish-grey.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Short needle-like spines that shade from light yellow to brownish-grey are typical, since spines darken with age.
Growth habit: Robust and clustering, vigorous enough that the community values it as grafting stock.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.
Flowers: Large, white and funnel-shaped, like those of the candicans group.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

What the sources say

The core disagreement is identity: hybrid on paper versus candicans by eye, with no resolution offered.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.The maternal side is an inference from a nursery note, not a stated fact.Reported, but not confirmed.The wiki page is bot-compiled and unverified.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

A hybrid column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Hybrid. 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

sanpedrocact.us, the community Trichocereus wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This entry rests on one record. Every fact above traces back to sanpedrocact.us, the community Trichocereus wiki (CC BY-NC 4.0). No second, independent source has confirmed it, so read it as one account rather than as a checked fact. Where we do find a second source we name it here, and the register shows how much of this site rests on each.

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