| | The genera of Cactaceae |
~ Borzicactus, cf. Hunt (1967)
Including Eomatucana F. Ritter
The plants cerioid to condensed-cactoid (the juveniles shortly cerioid); low and very compacted in their entirety, or not ‘low and very compacted’. The plants’ appearance dominated neither by crowded areolar structures nor by tubercles covering the areoles. The plants not vegetatively reduced to tubercles. The stems spiny, or spiny to not spiny; globose, or shortly cylindric to elongate cylindric; neither cephaliate nor pseudocephaliate. The plants branched, or unbranched, or offsetting; solitary, or clustering (solitary or cushion-forming from basal branches); to (0.1–)0.2–0.75 m high. The stems not segmented; ribbed and grooved. The ribs 7–30; longitudinal; ribs broad and low. The plants at least fairly conspicuously tuberculate (sometimes strongly so). The tubercles connected by the ribs; borne in longitudinal series. The areoles associated with tubercles; distant; mostly borne in longitudinal series; simple. The flowering areoles resembling the non-flowering ones. The areoles hairy; without glochids; with spines (usually), or with spines to without spines. The spines solitary to clustered (very variable, from "numerous" to absent); 1–65; 1–6 cm long; with radials and centrals differentiated, or showing little or no difference between radials and centrals. Central spines if differentiated, 0, or 1–20. Radial spines 4–45. The spines fine; never hooked; straight, or curved. The mature stems leafless.
Flowering during the day. The flowers more or less terminal (to subapical); one per areole; glabrous, stout, narrowly, funnelform, or tubular to funnelform (with the short perianth quite strongly recurved); sessile; small to large; 4–7 cm long; regular to very irregular (usually more or less bilaterally symmetrical). The receptacle conspicuously produced beyond the ovary into a tubular hypanthium. The hypanthial tube not naked; with scales. The axils of the scales of the hypanthial tube more or less naked (from densely hairy to almost naked), or not naked (?). The hypanthial tube spineless. The perianth orange, or red, or yellow (rarely); limb relatively large. The perianth segments elongate, relatively narrow, or relatively short, broad; pointed. The androecium including staminodes (e.g., in Borzicactus), or without staminodes. Stamens adnate to the perianth (inserted in the throat and tube); not separated from the perianth by a ring of hairs; and syle shortly exserted beyond the perianth, or not exserted; not grouped; coherent (basally, sometimes), or free of one another.
The mature fruit 0.5–2 cm long; globose, or ovoid, or ellipsoidal; with persistent floral remains; hollow, somewhat fleshy to non-fleshy when mature; dehiscent; dehiscing vertically by more than one slit, or irregularly dehiscent ("opening by longitudinal tears"). The seeds variable, oval to hat-shaped; not encased in bony arils. Cotyledons reduced or vestigial.
Natural Distribution. Peru. South America.
Classification. About 16 species. Subfamily Cactoideae. Tribe Trichocereeae.
Images. • Matucana aureiflora: © Zoya Akulova (2016). • Matucana pujupatii: © Zoya Akulova (2010). • Matucana haynei, habit: Britton & Rose (1922).
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’.
