Xerophyte

Seeds

About 0.9 mm long, cap shaped, 0.7 mm broad, 0.5 mm thick.

Description

It is a tiny solitary grey-green cactus that grows partly underground with a tuberous root.

Roots

Tuberose, few branched from underground part of the stem.

Note

The flower reminds that of Turbinicarpus lophophoroidesSN|11693]]SN|11693]], but smaller however.

Tubercles

Rounded to rhomboid, poorly developed, 4 to 10 mm tall.

Flowers

Funnel-shaped on the apex of the plant, white are up to 2.5 cm long, 1.5-2 cm in diameter often with pinkish midstripe. Stamens 60-80, filaments white, anthers light yellow. Style 8 mm long, white, standing above the anthers. Stigma white, with 5, not spreading, lobes, 1 mm long.

Spines

Dimorphic. Juvenile plants have 6 to 13 pectinate spines, 2.5-3 mm long; mature plants have 4 to 7 not corky, needle-like white-grey spines, sometime with a darker tip, erect, some short ones pointing down, some longer pointing up, up to 2 cm long.

Stem

0,5-2 cm tall, 2-5 cm in diameter (or more in cultivation), depressed globose, greyish, minutely flocculose and deeply sunken stomata, with a thick wax layer forming irregular flat to scale-like structures, apex with white felt.

Fruits

Greenish, brownish and drying at maturity 05-7 mm long, 4 mm in diameter with about 50 seeds, dehiscing at the side

Areoles

Apical about 1 mm in diameter, at first with white felt, later becoming bare.