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| The genera of Cactaceae |
The plants succulent; condensed-cactoid (the smallest of all cacti); low and very compacted in their entirety; tiny, with depressed, discoid stems, tuberous rootstock, spineless areoles and deliquescent fruits. The stems not spiny; with tuberous rootstock, tiny discoid. The plants lithophytic (growing in crevices and surviving desiccation); to about 12 mm in diameter, solitary, or clustering. The stems not segmented; not ribbed and grooved. The plants not conspicuously tuberculate. The areoles not tubercle-associated; spirally disposed; simple; woolly; without spines. The mature stems leafless.
Flowering during the day. The flowers terminal; one per areole; sessile; very small; 0.6–1.5 cm long (0.5–0.7 in diameter); regular. The receptacle conspicuously produced beyond the ovary into a tubular hypanthium to scarcely produced beyond the ovary. The pericarpel scaly and woolly like the tube. The hypanthial tube not naked; with scales (these small). The axils of the scales of the hypanthial tube not naked (woolly). The hypanthial tube spineless. The perianth pink (-ish, rarely), or white.
The mature fruit small; globose; red; not naked (with wool and scales persisting); without spines; with persistent floral remains; fleshy; indehiscent (deliquescent). The seeds very small, arillate, brown; not encased in bony arils; with hilum and micropyle conjunct. The testa with minute hairlike projections. Cotyledons reduced or vestigial.
Natural Distribution. Argentina, Bolivia.
Classification. 1 species (B. liliputana). Subfamily Cactoideae. Tribe Notocacteae.
Cf. Hunt 1967.
Images. • Blossfeldia liliputana: © Zoya Akulova (2007). • Blossfeldia liliputana: © Zoya Akulova (2007).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2018 onwards. The genera of Cactaceae: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 14th November 2021. delta-intkey.com’.
