Xerophyte

Central Spines

1-2, stout, 3-10 cm long.

Seeds

Broadly oval, 1,5 mm black, often grey from the detaching cuticle.

Description

Eulychnia castaneaSN|886]]SN|886]] is a branched shrubby or tree-like succulent plant, hanging down from the rocks on its native hills or spreading from the base with long cereoid stems forming dense thickets sometimes 20 meters broad.

Flowers

Diurnal, white, borne laterally near tips of branches, small, 5-5,5 long, 4-5 cm in diameter, broadly campanulate; pericarpel tuberculate, tube short, with numerous minute small scales with short brown woolly hairs and slender, stiff, bristly spines 1-1,5 cm long, perianth erect or some-what spreading; tepals 1-1,5 cm long, white or pinkish, tepals. Style short and thick.

Spines

Yellow to brown, straight, often strong unequal.

Ribs

8-13 low rounded.

Stem

Cylindrical 50-200 cm long, 6 to 8 cm in diameter, green branching at base ascending at first, later spreading or decumbent.

Radial Spines

6-10 radiating. 5-20 mm long.

Fruits

Globose, up to 5 cm in diameter, fleshy, yellow-green scaly and spiny devoid of bristles except near top; floral remnant persistent.

Areoles

covered with dark grey felt about 1 cm apart.