Xerophyte

Central Spines

Sometimes with one to 7 short porrect stouter centrals, white or with pale brownish tips, usually about 3 mm long, a few may be longer; 1 central perpendicular to plant in centre of areole, may be very short; others radiating in front of radials.

Seeds

About 0,8-1 mm long and 1,5 mm broad, kidney-shaped or less pear-shaped, pitted, dark brown, with hilum lateral.

Description

Escobaria sneediiSN|10397]]SN|10397]] subsp. leei grows in dense clusters with as many as 100 or more stems in a clump.

Roots

Fibrous when young, or sometimes with a single definite, fleshy tap-root, which runs some centimetres before reducing.

Note

The subspecies leei differs from other Escobaria in densely its clumping habit, small stem size, and tightly, almost pectinate, spination. The wild population intergrades with other forms of Escobaria sneediiSN|10397]]SN|10397]] in the Guadalupe Mountains. This is apparently a neotenic variety of the species in which juvenile spination is retained throughout the life of the plant. This species is closely related to Escobaria sneediiSN|10397]]SN|10397]] var. sneedii from which it differs by having deflexed spines, rather than spreading ones, brownish - pink flowers as opposed to rose-magenta ones, and seeds 1 mm long as opposed to 0,75 mm in length.

Tubercles

Tightly packed cylindrical 2 mm long, often smaller with upper surface grooved on mature stems.

Flowers

Brownish-pink in early April-May. Showy but small, usually not opening widely, 1,2 cm long up to 1,5 cm wide; outer tepals brown or greenish-brown with light edges fringed; inner tepals brownish-pink (rarely pale yellowish, or whitish) in colour, usually with deep pink midstrip, edges lighter and entire. Style white longer than stamens with 4-6 short white stigma lobes.

Stem

Spherical at first, later mostly club shaped, sometimes cylindrical, branching and proliferating very rapidly, forming irregular clumps, each individual stem is 1,5-6(8)cm tall and 1-2,5 cm in diameter.

Radial Spines

30 to 90 very small, typically white often brown at tip, fading to grey, slender and bristle-like, mostly about 1-2,5 mm long, radiating from areole and appressed against plant.

Fruits

Small elongate, 1-1.5 cm long, greenish tinged with brownish or faintly pinkish when ripe to somewhat reddish, sometime with a few hairy scales, floral remnant persistent.

Areoles

Circular or elliptical on tips of tubercles often elongating into grooves from spiny portions at ends of tubercles to about halfway to tubercle bases; flowers and branches come from ends of grooves; at first very woolly, wool remains in grooves; centre of spiny part often very convex, bulging outward, with spines mostly pushed back, radiating and forming convex areole centres, giving unique, knobby appearance. Many stems remain with unelongated areoles, sometimes through-out life of stem.