Xerophyte

Central Spines

1 (occasionally 2 or 3) one of which usually strongly hooked, pure white below, but tipped very dark brown from the start.

Seeds

Dull black, pitted, whith a large depressed scar, less than 1 mm long.

Description

Small clumping plants with greyish-green bodies, sometime with up to 40 stems in a single cluster.

Tubercles

Prominent, rounded, usually depressed, somewhat united with adjacent ones almost into ridges, not grooved, juicy but not milky. Axil slightly woolly, without bristles.

Flowers

Relatively large (2,5-4 cm in diameter) near the top of the plant, funnel shaped, long-tubed, purplish pink, showy, nearly as large as the plant bodies, presumably attractive to hummingbirds. Segments about 10, lanceolate, acuminate, with long narrow spreading stigmata, stigma lobes 6, linear, green, stamens numerous, erect, shorter than style, slender erect and pale.

Blooming Season

Summer. This is quite early for a Mammillaria and start fowering when still very young, it usually produces the first blooms in the second year of a new branch forming.

Spines

All whitish with a darker brown tip.

Stem

Soft, blue-green or grey-green epidermis that tinge in pink in bright sun up to 5(-6) cm wide, globose to depressed conical when growing in habitat. While cultivated plant have (frequently) oblong offsetting stems.

Radial Spines

9-15 (usually 8-9), very regularly spaced and they stand out well, almost enough to act as a recognition character. They are up to 12 mm long, stout and glabrous in adult specimens. ( In very young seedling the radial spines are approx 10 to 11 feather like with long spreading hairs, in one year seedling simply pubescent)

Fruits

Slightly protruding from the stem, sunken and circumscissile, in a cup between the tubercles, short and dull in colour.