Throughout the centuries of distribution of these plants, they established habitats throughout the world. The text below provides a brief idea of the complex history of the cactus family, such as the discovery, distribution and the classification of the Cactus family. It is sometimes been said that Christopher Columbus brought back the first cactus to Europe, but that is not entirely accurate. In 1635 the earliest European record was established. This was the date that the first volume of Historia de las Indias Occidentales by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdes appeared with illustrations of what we would now classify as Cereus and Opuntia.
History also dates back to Natives of the American continents.
Fra Bernardino learned that natives used a certain plant to induce hallucinatory state. Since he probably knew that among all native and primitive people used mushrooms as hallucinogens, he named this hallucinogenic plant teonanacatl, or divine mushroom. But today we know that this plant was not mushroom, but rather the cactus Lophophora williamsii, better known as peyote or mescal. It is a possibility that Ariocarpus, Pelecyphora and Obregonia were used in similar ways. Over the centuries, a great amount of European discoveries have been made.