Xerophyte

Leaves

Very small falling off early.

Seeds

3 to 3.5 mm. broad, ovate, thickish, with narrow margin and roughened sides.

Description

Tunilla soehrensiiSN|3704]]SN|3699]] is a low low growing cactus, often prostrate and creeping , rooting on under-edges of growth. It forms masses usually 1 meter in diameter or less

Taxonomy

According to Kiesling & Ferrari (2005, 29), in habitat the boundaries between species of the genus Tunilla are not so well defined. More precisely, the boundaries are not so defined between Tunilla soehrensiiSN|3699]]SN|3699]] and Tunilla tilcarensisSN|3699]]SN|3704]].

Note

“soehrensii” For Prof. Johannes Sohrens (t 1934), German botanist and later director of the Botanical Garden at Santiago de Chile.

Flowers

Mostly yellow, occasionally orange or red, 3-5.5 cm long; pericarpels with areoles nearly to bases, bristly above. Sepals brown; filaments yellow; style white; stigma-lobes green.

Spines

2-12, usually 5-8, needle-like, stout, rather variable in color,usually yellowish to brownish, erect, unequal, spreading, on most areoles, the longest onesto 7 cm long.

Stem

At first erect or ascending, finally prostrate and rooting and forming new colonies, flattened, orbicular, sometimes inequilateral or crescent shaped, somewhat tuberculate, very spiny, 4-6 cm long, green, often purplish.

Fruits

to 2.5(-3) cm long, lacking areoles below, with some spines to 2 cm long above.

Areoles

Close set, as many as 60 or more per segment.