[6] Flowers, pollinated by moths of the genus Tegeticula, bloom typically in April.

[2] The epithet commemorates John Torrey, a 19th-century American botanist who designated this as a new variety in 1859.

Its range is centered around Big Bend National Park in the central Rio Grande valley in the Chihuahuan Desert.

It is found mainly in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, but also minor locales of Durango and Nuevo León.

[4][8] Native Americans used the fruit as a food source—raw, roasted, or dried and ground into meal.