Xerophyte

Habit

Plants usually solitary or forming just a few offsets around the base.

Seeds

About 1 mm thick and 1,2 to 1,8 mm long.

Description

Matucana weberbaueriSN|3774]]SN|6089]] is a low-growing, perennial stem succulent densely covered by golden yellow spines. This plant is a possible eastern relative of Matucana aurantiacaSN|6063]]SN|3774]] but differing in having more numerous spines (25-40) and small flowers.

Roots

Not napiform.

Flowers

Lemon yellow to orange, slim-tubed, straight to slightly oblique or zigomorphyc 5,5-6 cm. long and 3 cm in diameter. Ovary and flower-tube greenish-yellow, less than 8 mm in diameter, bearing lanceolate acute scales, these without (or with very few) hairs in their axils. Style white, stigma lobes 5-6 green about 2 mm long.

Blooming Season

Spring.

Spines

Varying from 25 to 40, golden to dark brown, becoming blackish with time, not differentiated as centrals and radials, straight, finely needle-like, the longer ones 5 cm long.

Ribs

18-30, with transverse ridges, forming terete, conical tubercles.

Stem

Depressed to somewhat cylindrical (particularly in cultivation), green 10-12(-15) cm broad, about 7 cm tall rarely up to 20 cm.

Fruits

Oval, green and red, to 13 mm long and 8 mm in diameter covered with small scales.

Areoles

On tubercles tip, creamy-white, rather close together (up to 1 cm apart), round to broadly elliptic, 7 mm long by 5 mm wide