Xerophyte

Central Spines

(1-)2-4(-7), thicker, 20-50 mm long with a darker tip.

Seeds

1,25 mm.

Description

Eriosyce kunzeiSN|2621]]SN|2613]], (syn

Roots

Fibrous or tuberose.

Note

This member of the Cactaceae family was given this name in honor of the German physician and botanist Gustav Kunze.

Flowers

Broadly funnelform, widely opened, up to 3,5 cm long and in diameter. Sepalois tepals ivory white, with a reddish mid-strip; petaloid tepals whitish yellow with a darker reddish mid-line, tips serrated or fringed. Flower tube woolly white with some black bristles. Perikarpell glossy green covered with brownish reddish scales. Stamens whitish, greenish-white or pinkish; anthers creamy white. Style flesh coloured and stigma lobes somewhat brighter.

Spines

Strong, stiff and curved upwards and inward, pale yellowish to straw yellow (rarely brownish or blackish) later grey. The var. kunzei is described with very thin, needle-shaped spines but it grows and merges with the thick spined form (var. transitensis). And in cultivation it is possible to find both thick and thin spined specimens.

Ribs

13 to 20 cm, about 7 to12 mm tall in adult specimens, 13-17 mm apart, obtuse, enlarged at areoles and tubercled.

Stem

Globose or flattened to cylindrical, 10-20 cm tall, 13-14 cm in diameter. The apex is depressed and often deprived of spines, but spines covering the stems. Epidermis green or blue-green, rarely tan-green to dark violet-green .

Radial Spines

10-12(-15) about 13-45 mm long straighter, mostly directed downward, the upper of them are longer than other.

Fruits

About 2 cm long and 1,5 cm oval, fleshy, hollow, dull-green, tan, to reddish that opens at maturity by a basal pore.

Areoles

5-20 mm apart.