| | The genera of Cactaceae |
The plants succulent to not succulent (only somewhat so); cerioid; not ‘low and very compacted’. The stems spiny; elongate cylindric; 1–2.5 cm in diameter. The plants with one or more stems arising from a slightly enlarged, woody rootstock, sparsely branched; sprawling or prostrate to erect; shrubby; to 3 m high. The stems columnar, or not columnar. The branches to 200 cm long; 1–2.5 cm in diameter. The stems olive green, slender, woody, lacking mucilage, not segmented; ribbed and grooved (the numerous fine ribs bearing crowded areoles). The ribs 10–19; longitudinal; rounded, obtuse, low, with wavy sinuses. The grooves wide. The plants not conspicuously tuberculate. The areoles not tubercle-associated; closely approximating to distant (4–7mm apart); borne in longitudinal series; simple. The flowering areoles resembling the non-flowering ones. The areoles not woolly; without glochids; with spines. The spines clustered; 8–16; 0.5–3 cm long; showing little or no difference between radials and centrals; slender, acicular, straight; yellowish to dark brown. The mature stems leafless.
Flowering at night. The flowers lateral (near the stem tips); tubular, or funnelform to campanulate; sessile; medium-sized to large; 40–57 cm long (20–25 mm in diameter); regular. The receptacle conspicuously produced beyond the ovary into a tubular hypanthium. The pericarpel green, scaly, with spines to 4 mm long in their axils. The hypanthial tube green; not naked; with scales (these numerous, small, acute). The axils of the scales of the hypanthial tube not naked (with dark hairs and bristles to 12 mm long). The hypanthial tube with spines, or spineless. The perianth exposed during bud development; limb short, the segments more or less erect; white; limb relatively large. The perianth segments relatively short, broad.
The mature fruit 2.3–3.1 cm long; globose to ovoid; red; naked to not naked; spiny (with fugacious spines), or without spines; with persistent floral remains; non-fleshy when mature; indehiscent. The seeds 1.3–1.8 mm long; with oblique huilum dark brown, or black; "curved obovate"; curved; not encased in bony arils. The testa shiny; somewhat verrucose and spotted (minutely). Cotyledons reduced or vestigial.
Natural Distribution. Brazil.
Classification. 1 species (L. bahiensis). Subfamily Cactoideae. Tribe Trichocereeae.
Cf. Hunt (1967).
Images. • Leocereus bahiensis: Britton & 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’.
