Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Highly specialized, usually succulent shrubs or trees up to 4 m tall, with a distinct trunk, usually spiny, the spines variable in number, size, arrangement, and color, produced from specialized axillary structures (areoles).

Stems: Joints narrowly elliptic to narrowly obovate, 10–25 cm long, (5–)7–12 cm wide. areoles spineless or rarely with 1–3 weak grayish spines ca. 1 cm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves reduced, caducous. Blades subulate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), diurnal, 4–6 cm long, 1.5–2 cm in diameter, very rarely unisexual, actinomorphic or occasionally zygomorphic. Outer perianth parts red, sometimes with a green median stripe, erect, 5–10 mm long, 4–8 mm wide, inner perianth parts red, erect, imbricate, 10–20 mm long, 8–12 mm wide, distinct, gradually grading from sepaloid to petaloid, usually not sharply differentiated into 2 series; receptacle tube very short, naked or with scales and areoles bearing hairs, bristles, or spines. Stamens numerous, inserted in the throat of the receptacle tube, staminal filaments pink, long–exserted, 25–40 mm long. Ovary inferior, with areoles bearing hairs, glochids, and often spines; style pink, long–exserted, 25–40 mm long; stigma lobes 6–8.

Fruit: Berries red; fleshy; 2.5–4 cm long; 2.5–3 cm in diameter; indehiscent. Seeds numerous; white to brown; flattened; enclosed in a hard; bony aril.

Ploidy: 2n = 22

Habitat: escaped in low elevation disturbed areas.

Elevation Range: