Xerophyte

Central Spines

1-3, often hooked, whitish, brownish to grayish, to 2(-4) cm long.Flowers Almost lateral, funnel-shaped, tepals white or pale lilac-pink with a darker midline, 15-20 mm long and in diameter, bare (without hairs) but scaly and with a distinct nectar chamber.

Seeds

Blackish to brown, large, 2 x 1,5 mm, rugose, shaped like a comma. Hilum inconspicuous.

Description

Neowerdermannia vorwerkiiSN|10426]]SN|10426]] has the form of an inverted cone with the flat top almost at soil level, but in cultivation it usually shows a spherical shape. The fat underground stock is formed by part of the stem (identifiable from the remnants of old areoles) merging with the tuberose root (identifiable from the fine lateral roots)

Roots

Thick turnip-like

Note

It is close related with Neowerdermannia.

Blooming Season

May or June.Fruits Deep seated between the tubercles, globose, green, becoming reddish, 5-8 mm in diameter. Opening when ripe by a partial circumscissile splitting near the top of the fruit with the partial fruit cap tilting outward at about 160°.

Ribs

16 or more, indistinct, spiralling, deeply divided into bluntly conic tubercles, 3-sided, with a triangular flattened upper side, and an acute, hatchet-like under side.

Stem

Depressed globose, partially underground, green,pale green or dark gray-green, 6-8(-10) cm across.

Fruits

The fruit mature the year after.

Areoles

Found, uncharacteristically for cacti, at the base of the tubercles instead of at the apex and with white-wooll when young,Radial spines up to10 spreading star-like, curved, blackish at first, later whitish or brownish, to 17 mm long. Lowest directed downward.