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Vilcabamba seal. Plain ring: nothing here sets a rib count, a spine length or a growth form the ring can mark.

Other Trichocereus

Vilcabamba

Partially documented

Also written as Vilca1, Vilca2, Vilcabamba 1, Vilcabamba 2, Vilcabamba A, Vilcabamba B

Vilcabamba is a locality name covering more than one accession collected from wild plants in Ecuador, two of which a German grower brought back in 1990. Vilcabamba 2 is the one described: smooth and near-spineless enough to be mistaken for a , but different in , ribs, , flowers and fruit. A parallel set of A and B designations exists, and whether they overlap with 1 and 2 is unresolved.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

  • scop lookalike
  • near spineless
  • wild Ecuador line

Other TrichocereusField-collection code: A collector's accession number — initials and a number — rather than a nickname.

Of the 10 things this page says, 2 name who reports them and 8 are marked as something we cannot confirm. Where a line is not settled, it says so underneath.

Added 23 Aug 2026

At a glance

Species

Not recorded

No source named a species for this one.

Filed under Other Trichocereus

Parents

Not recorded

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

Origin

The plants come from wild populations near Vilcabamba, Ecuador.

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

In the yard

Not in the yardAsk if you are after one

Family line

what the record holds

No source in this library records a cross for Vilcabamba. Nobody names a mother or a father for it, and no other entry here names it as a parent.

That is the record, not an oversight: of the 749 names in this library, 693 have no recorded relation either. Most named clones were selected, cut and passed along without anyone writing down what they came out of. A parent goes in here when a source states it and never because a name looks like one — a wrong pedigree would travel further than a blank one, because pedigrees get copied.

If you know where it came from, tell us — a person reads everything before it appears.

The longer version

A German grower collected two there in 1990 and carried them to Germany, and those became Vilcabamba 1 and 2 in collections.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Separate designations Vilcabamba A and B also circulate, associated with a different collector, and the wiki page speculates that B and 2 may be the same plant.Reported, but not confirmed.

Its collection site sits beside an Inca highway, the Qhapac Nan, which historically carried a great deal of traffic between Vilcabamba and Huancabamba.Reported, but not confirmed.

A California nursery that grows it agrees on the country and adds the step in between: the it sells as Vilcabamba B came out of Pedro Park's garden in Spain.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.It separates the Ecuadorian look — white areoles, notching, a darker skin tone — from the smoother, shorter-spined Peruvian one.Reported, but not confirmed.

Where the name comes from

The plants come from wild populations near Vilcabamba, Ecuador.Reported by 2 independent sources; we have not seen it ourselves.

Character

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

  • Not documented yet.

  • Not documented yet.

  • Not documented yet.

Notes
Vilcabamba 2 looks superficially like a scopulicola, being mostly spineless and smooth, but differs in skin texture, shape, areole structure and its flowers and fruit.One source states this, and our house botanist has checked it. Flowering is normal for the genus, and the sources agree its flowers differ from a lookalike.

What the sources say

Two numbering systems - 1 and 2 versus A and B - are in use for plants from the same locality, and the wiki page can only guess that B and 2 might be the same clone. The wiki page is bot-compiled and unverified.Too little stands behind this for us to confirm it.

Drawing of two plain Trichocereus columns of different heights, standing for the wider genus rather than one plant.
A Trichocereus column, drawn. We don't grow this one, and we will not borrow anybody else's photograph of it.

Filed under the same family, Other Trichocereus. 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.