The areolas are 2 to 2.5 centimeters apart, circular or elliptical and covered with white wooly hairs.

Fruits are spherical to oblong with scales, 7-9 mm in diameter, greenish or yellowish.

Seeds are 1.7-2 mm long[3] The plant is found in the Chihuahuan Desert of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, Mexico growing at elevations of 1200-1900 meters growing in xerophytic shrubland on calcareous soils.

[4] Echinocactus rinconensis was described in The Cactaceae in 1855 by Heinrich Poselger.

[5] Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose placed the species in the genus Thelocactus in 1923.