Its species take the form of shrubs with arching or climbing stems up to several meters in height.

The little scaly pericarpel and the long, stiff, upright flower tube are covered with a few thorns that soon decay and little wool.

The fruits are spherical to ovoid or pear-shaped red or green, bare or thorny, tear-open or non-tear-open and contain broadly oval, shiny black seeds of up to 4.8 millimeter.

[citation needed] The name was first used by George Engelmann in 1863, although he did not describe its characters, leaving it to Alwin Berger in 1905 to define it as a subsection of Cereus.

In 1909, Nathaniel Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose elevated Acanthocereus to a genus.