Xerophyte

Central Spines

0-1 or usually 2 (but some plant have 4), divergent, one pointing upwards and often longer (up to 5 mm long), the other turned backward, 1-3 mm long, awl-shaped, straight, smooth, thicker at base, they are both brownish with a darker tip.

Seeds

Brown, club-shaped, 1 mm long and 0,8 mm wide. Hilum small and sub-basal.

Description

Simple or dichotomicously branched (occasionally ramifies , producing a few basal shoots) with short dense spines.

Roots

Fibrous.

Note

There are actually in cultivation several forms of this controversial species. The one labelled Mammillaria pseudoperbellaSN|20707]]SN|20717]] (= Mammillaria perbellaSN|20717]]SN|20707]] lanata?) have usually carmine pink flowers with darker midstripe usually in several complete rings in April-may, with 20-30 setaceous radial spines and abundant axillary wool, while the one identified as M. perbella have sparse purplish pink flowers opening most of the summer with fewer stouter and shorter radial spines. But this division is arbitrary and it is almost impossible to discern the two plant and the many intermediate forms .

Tubercles

Short cylindric/conical firm, 6 - 7 mm long and 2 mm wide, arranged in numerous, very close-set spirals. The Axil is naked or with a little bit wool and bristles.

Flowers

Small, funnelform, 10 - 12 mm long and in diameter, purplish pink with darker midstripe. The perianth-segments are narrow-oblong, with an ovate acute tip; the style is longer than the filaments, pinkish; the stigma-lobes are 3, obtuse.

Stem

Symmetrically globose at first, later cylindric, with a depressed apex that appears completely white. 50 - 200 mm high and 50 - 80 mm in diameter, dull green and may, with age, become suberized at its base.

Radial Spines

20 - 30, short, 1 - 3 mm long, somewhat horizontal radiating and arranged laterally on each side of the tubercle, white.

Fruits

Attractively deep dull pinkish-red coloured .Club-shaped, 10 - 15 mm long and 2 - 3 mm wide. Ripens 7 months after flowering. Selfsterile.