Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Highly specialized, usually succulent plants arborescent or shrubs, usually spiny, the spines variable in number, size, arrangement, and color, produced from specialized axillary structures (areoles).

Stems: Stems erect to procumbent, usually many-branched, spiny.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), very rarely unisexual, actinomorphic or occasionally zygomorphic, large, funnelform, nocturnal. Perianth parts indefinite, few to numerous, white, the outermost green, sometimes red, inner tepals white or yellow, receptacle tube with a few scales, the entire perianth deciduous after anthesis. Stamens numerous, inserted in the throat of the receptacle tube; 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, persistent in fruit.

Fruit: Berries red or yellow; fleshy; ovoid to oblong; dehiscent along 1 side. Seeds numerous; shiny black; reniform; endosperm present or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: