Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Highly specialized, usually succulent plants arborescent, up to 6 m tall, branched, usually spiny, the spines variable in number, size, arrangement, and color, produced from specialized axillary structures (areoles).

Stems: Stems cylindrical, 10–20 cm in diameter, ribs 6–9, rarely fewer. areoles gray or brown, spines 6–8 per areole, brown or black, 1–4 cm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), very rarely unisexual, actinomorphic or occasionally zygomorphic, nocturnal, 12–15 cm long, 8–10 cm in diameter. Sepaloid perianth green or slightly pinkish, narrowly oblong to narrowly lanceolate, 4–5 cm long, 0.9–1.2 cm wide; inner perianth parts white, oblanceolate, 4–5–7.5 cm long, 1–2 cm wide, receptacle tube with a few scales, the entire perianth deciduous after anthesis. Staminal filaments greenish; anthers dithecal, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary inferior, very rarely superior, 3-carpellate to many-carpellate, 1-celled; ovules numerous, on parietal placentas, usually campylotropous, naked or with a few scales; style 1, green, 7.5–10 cm long; stigma lobes 12–15, green, ca. 1 cm long.

Fruit: Fruit berries reddish or yellowish orange; fleshy; 5–7.5 cm long; 4.5–5 cm in diameter; smooth or with a few scales; splitting along 1 side and exposing a sweet white pulp; dehiscent. Seeds numerous; shiny black; reniform; endosperm present or absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 22

Habitat:

Elevation Range: