Xerophyte

Habit

It is a simple or clumping barrel/column cactus with thick red spines. In habitat plants must be a great age, often forming into quite massive groups, with several subsidiary barrels growing from the main one.

Central Spines

Several, subulate-acicular, stright or slightly curved, more or less flattened and angular at first bright red/purplish becoming dull yellow with age, but some populations also boast yellow-spined individuals, and the white bristles are occasionally absent.

Seeds

1,5 mm long, brownish, pitted with a small basal hilum.

Description

Ferocactus pringleiSN|13424]]SN|13434]] is one of the controversial geographical forms of the variable Ferocactus pilosusSN|13434]]SN|13424]] with thick red spines and usually without white bristles. However it look very similar to subs. pilosus and are linked one to each others by populations of plants with intermediate characteristics. Nowadays both are thought to belong to a unique polymorphic species with some individual covered in fine white hairs, while others do not. Such variation has led to establishment of several unnecessary names for this species.

Flowers

Yellow to red, about 2,5 cm long, scales on the ovary numerose, orbicular, imbricated, inner perianth segment oblanceolate, obtuse or apiculate.

Ribs

13-20, compressed, more or less ondulate.

Stem

Columnar deep green up to 2,4(-3) m tall and 30 to 40 cm in diameter, with several subsidiary barrels growing from the main one.

Radial Spines

Sometime absent or usually reduced to long white or straw coloured hairs on the areoles that appears later with age.

Fruits

Yellow, somewhat succulent, dehishing by basal pore, 3 to 4 cm long, crowned by persisting perianth.

Areoles

Distant to closely set and almost contiguous in older specimens, circular.