Xerophyte

Seeds

Black

Description

Rhipsalis cereusculaSN|32874]]SN|32874]], is a shrubby to bushy succulent epiphyte, to 60 cm long, sometimes referred as 'rice cactus' or 'coral cactus'. It is easily recognizable due to the multitude of tiny, cylindrical stems that are borne at the ends of long, slender branches. Plants are usually much branched, pendent and bear tiny creamy white bloom.

Note

Variability in R. cereuscula is not very pronounced, apart from some variation in fruit colour.

Flowers

Diurnal, opening for several days, terminal or near the ends of the of third-order segments only, unscented, hanging down, bell shaped, lacking a hypanthium, white to creamy-pink, 8-15 mm long, 10-20 mm in diameter. Pericarpel green to pale yellowish green, globose to obconical, 4–5 mm in diameter, nude or occasionally with 1–2 reddish triangular scales, with or without bristles in their axils. Tepals about 11–15, the inner 7–8 slightly larger than the outer, 8–10 mm long and 3 mm wide, narrowly elliptic, white or pale creamy-white with yellowish midrib, tip faintly flushed pinkish, the outer elements more spreading. Stamens about 36, filaments white 7–10 mm long; anthers pale yellow. Style white, thin, 9–10 mm long, longer than the stamens and usually also exerted above the perianth; stigma lobes 3–5, spreading to recurved, whitish.

Blooming Season

Winter-spring.

Stem

Stems and branches pale fresh green, terete, with determinate growth, acrotonical branching ( that is to say that it prefer to send sap to buds near the top of the plant) and strongly dimorphic (extension shoots and second-order and third-order stems of different lengths). Long extension shoots, slender, usually elongate, often erect, cylindrical, almost round in cross section, (7-)10-30(-60) cm long, 3-4 mm in diameter, crowned by an apical cluster of short branches and with numerous adventitious roots, attached to branches or tree trunks or erect to irregularly spreading and finally pendent, branching widely apically. Second-order shoots in clusters of 3–4 (–10 or more) at or near the tips of extension shoots, not always present, 4–10 cm long, spineless. Short terminal shoots (third order shoots) usually clavate, sometimes irregularly sausage-like, rarely much abbreviated and almost globose, in pairs or in dense clusters at the tip of second-order shoots or in groups of up to five from the tip of older third-order shoots, seeming to diverge at random, yet with a rhythm and grace, 2 to 6 times as long as thick, obscurely 4(or 5)-angled, 0.5–1.5 cm long, 2-4 mm in diameter.

Fruits

White or occasionally red outside Brazil, globose to obovoid 5–7 mm in diameter retaining shrivelled floral remnants at the top of the fruit, pulp strongly mucilaginous.

Areoles

Closely set, composite, marginal, bearing 2 to 4 soon-caducous, short bristles. Bristles transparent, delicate, to 1.5 mm long.