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| The genera of Cactaceae |
~ Austrocephalocereus, Cephalocereus, Gerocephalus
Including Gerocephalus F. Ritter
The plants cerioid. The stems spiny; elongate cylindric; cephaliate and pseudocephaliate. The plants branched (mostly basally, producing several unbranched stems); erect; shrubby; to 2–4 m high. The stems columnar. The branches resembling the main stem. The main stem more or less cylindrical. The branches cylindrical. The stems not segmented; ribbed and grooved. The ribs 20–28; longitudinal; low. The grooves fairly wide. The plants not conspicuously tuberculate. The areoles not tubercle-associated; closely approximating to distant (with matted yellowish wool and abundant white hairs); borne in longitudinal series; simple; hairy; without glochids; with spines. The spines clustered; 2–3 cm long; with radials and centrals differentiated (the fine radials shorter than the erect, acicular centrals and hidden in the areolar hairs). Central spines 2–3. Radial spines "numerous". The mature stems leafless.
Flowering at night. The flowers lateral (in the pseudocephalia); one per areole (?); shortly tubular, or campanulate; sessile; medium-sized; to 4 cm long; regular. The receptacle conspicuously produced beyond the ovary into a tubular hypanthium. The pericarpel naked. The hypanthial tube not naked; with scales (these very small). The axils of the scales of the hypanthial tube more or less naked. The hypanthial tube spineless. The perianth white.
The mature fruit 2.5 cm in diameter; broadly ovoid; pink (with white pulp); naked to not naked ("nearly naked"); without spines; with persistent floral remains (these blackening); fleshy; indehiscent. The seeds black; ovoid, or pyriform; not encased in bony arils. The testa rough, tuberculate. Cotyledons reduced or vestigial.
Natural Distribution. Northern Bahia, Brazil.
Classification. 1 species (E. dybowskii). Subfamily Cactoideae. Tribe Trichocereeae.
Images. • Espostoopsis dybowskii (as Cephalocereus), habit: Briton & Rose (1920).
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’.
