Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs, trees or climbing vines.

Stems: Stems straight or zig-zag.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple (bladelike or modified into spines). Spines 1–12 per areole. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers bisexual (perfect), from areoles of new growth, fragrant or not. Outer tepals often greenish, colored near margins; inner Tepals white, yellow, orange-red, red, pink to purplish. Stamens 50–100 in small-flowered species, to 300 in large-flowered species; filaments colorless near base, in some species pigmented distally, color either matching inner tepals or contrasting with them. Ovary inferior; stigma lobes 3–20.

Fruit: Berries spheric; pyriform; or broadly depressed-obovate; fleshy. Seeds lenticular; glossy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: