Xerophyte

Leaves

Minute, 2 to 3 mm long, early deciduous.

Seeds

Variable-shaped, yellowish white to ocher and 3.5 to 5 millimeters long.

Description

Miqueliopuntia miqueliiSN|4177]]SN|4177]] is the only species comprised in the genus Miqueliopuntia. . It is an uncommon many-branched, upright, bushy, opuntioid cactus , with elongated cylindric bluish joints from Chile, forming large thickets 1-1.5 m high and 2 to 5 meters wide.Derivation of specific name. The specific epithet honors Dr. Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (1818–1871), Dutch physician and botanist, director of the botanical gardens of Rotterdam, then Amsterdam, and finally Utrecht.

Flowers

Large nearly white to pink, borne near the stem tips, not opening fully, rather variable in length, up to 8 cm long including the ovary. Tepals broad, apiculate, 2 to 2.5 cm. long. Filaments rose-colored. Pericarpel strongly tuberculate with areoles filled with numerous brown bristly glochids and subtended by minute leaves. Style white; stigma-lobes green.

Glochids

Numerous, brownish, caducous, 4-8 millimeters long and usually found in the upper part of the areoles.

Blooming Season

Flowers only at adult stage often after decades, it is said of plants that have not done any flowers for the first 50 years.

Spines

Tardily developing on the areoles, but formidable on old branches, needle-like, very unequal, in clusters of 8-16 or more, the longest ones nearly 10 cm long, yellowish to dark brown, whitish or greysh in age.

Stem

Cylindrical, much branched, usually less than 1 meter high, but occasionally 1.5 meters high, with numerous lateral branches. Old branches bluish, with low tubercles sometimes 2 cm long; young joints bright green, with high tubercles flattened laterally. The segments, often arising near the tips of older segments, are rather short and clearly jointed, stout, 7-20 cm long, 3-6 cm in diameter.

Fruits

Pale green to whitish, spherical to elongated and covered with bristly spines.

Areoles

up to 60 i neach joint, circular, when young filled with white wool, in age somewhat elevated.