Xerophyte

Description

This is a miniature cactus that makes a nice and tangled cluster of fine crests. The stem surface is completely obscured by small pectinated ashy-grey to white spines.

Roots

Diffuse (usually) or tap-root (in some populations)

Tubercles

Numerous, not confluent into ribs, hemispheric or short cylindric, very small, ca. 1-3 mm; arranged in tight spirals around the plant.

Flowers

Funnelform diurnal, borne in the plant top. Only partly opened just distal portion visible, as they barely stick out above the wool obscured by longer spines at stem apex.

Blooming Season

Flowering late winter-early spring (Feb-Apr)

Fruiting Season

Late spring-early summer (Apr-Jun).

Spines

20-35(-40) white to ashy grey 2-5 mm long, appressed on sides of stems, straight, innocuous, in 1-3 superimposed series except for a longer (4-12 mm) and erect adaxial tuft on the top, on sexually mature stem apex often greyish or purplish white, frequently with brown bases, collectively forming brown spots at the centre of each spine cluster.

Fruits

Bright red, thin narrowly cylindric, mm, weakly succulent, soon drying and papery, smooth, spineless; pulp absent; floral remnant deciduous.

Areoles

Small at tips of tubercles, 1 mm long, nearly circular, elliptic when distended by flower or fruit, slightly woolly when young, copiously woolly only at sexually mature stem apex; areolar glands absent;