Xerophyte

Central Spines

2-5, 2-6 cm long.

Description

Copiapoa solaris is a slow clumping succulent with a cushion like growth form. It is incredibly slow growing, but old plants in habitat - over centuries - will form large cushion up to 2,30 m of diameter and 90 cm tall with hundreds of heads.

Note

The variety "fulvispina" n.n. (commercialized by Karel Kníže with the field number KK599) is characterized by yellow-amber spines (possibly thinner, longer and more numerose than the standard C. solaris.)

Flowers

Up to 3 cm long and in diameter, funnelform, yellow, occasionally with a pink or reddish coloured throat. The flowers are often almost concealed among the dense wool and spines at plant apex. Flower tube woolly (Hence the name Pilocopiapoa = hairy Copiapoa). It needs a lot of sunlight to bloom, so it's pretty rare to have blossoms when in cultivation in greenhouses.

Spines

Yellow, amber or reddish-brown when young, later chalky-grey, robust, straight or slightly bent, long and interwoven.

Ribs

8-12 elevated, up to 3,5 cm tall, not tuberculate.

Stem

Individual stems 8-12 cm in diameter, cylindrical green to grey-green with a waxy coating presumably to prevent desiccation in it's extremely dry environment. Offsets appear as white blobs and take about six months to produce a spine or two.

Radial Spines

7-10, 2-3 cm long.

Fruits

Woolly, up to 15 mm in diameter.