Xerophyte

Leaves

Minute, 1.5 mm. long, reddish, deciduous as new growth matures .

Note

Variety cristata is offered in the trade journals.

Flowers

Borne laterally, yellow green to olive green, ca. 4 cm long; sepals linear, pointed, reddish; petals light brown, narrowly spatulate, slightly crenate; ericarpels without developed areoles but with small scales-like leaves bearing short hairs and bristles in their axils, especially near the rims; filaments white, shorter than the petals; style white, with 7 stigma-lobes.

Glochids

Absent.

Spines

4 to 10, white, pectinate and flattened against the surface.

Distinguishing Characters

Areoles elliptic, with short, pectinate spines, areoles of fruit generally without glochids (simplified areoles on the pericarpel), showing just a few hairs in the axil of a triangular scale, fruits dry, indehiscent; characteristic seeds, cotyledons up to 60% of the length of the embryo.

Stem

Short greyish to dark brownish 2-3(-4) cm high, 1.5 cm in diameter, not tuberculate, rather fragile, cylindrical to obconical, sometimes with flattened-truncate faces apically or cristate at apex an little branching. The typical form has distinctive conical segments with the growing centre at the widest flat end of the cone, but monstrous forms with cristate fan-shaped or clavate finger-like stems are widely seen in cultivation. Sometimes all three of these stem forms may be seen on a single plant.

Fruits

Ellipsoid to pear shaped, dry, dehiscing irregularly, 1.5 cm long, one-seeded.

Areoles

Minute, numerous and crowded on upper parts of segments, infrequent below., filled with wool and minute spines.