Description of Turbinicarpus pseudomacrochele ssp. krainzianus

T. pseudomacrochele ssp. krainzianus [Click the image for more pictures]
Photo © Mark Faint
Gerhardt Frank, KuaS 11(11): 168-170, 1960.

Body short cylindrical, solitary, in age sometimes offsetting, mostly with a transition-less continuation to the thick tuberous root, 3-4 cm high, 2-3 cm wide, dark green. Apex white wooled, towered over by curved wiry spines. About 11 spirally arranged ribs; tubercles, rhombic at the base, conical at the top, to 4 mm high. Areole on the tip of the tubercle, in new growth white wooled, in age becoming bare.

Spines 6-8, wiry, tortuous, 12-30 mm long, the uppermost the longest, flexible, not piercing, in new growth yellowish-brown later becoming grey with dark tips, dropping off from older areoles.

Flowers from the apex, narrow funnel-shaped, 20 mm long, 12-16 narrow lanceolate petals, inside bright cream-yellow, outside more greenish and with greenish mid-stripe. 4-6 pointed green sepals, ovaries green. Styles white, with 4 white stigma lobes. Anthers lying below the stigma, yellow.

Fruit bare, oval to somewhat spherical, 3 to 5 mm in diameter, initially green, later at ripening turning red mostly from the top, with persistent dried up flowers remains, at maturity splitting vertically and containing 20-25 seeds. Seeds black, egg- to pear-shaped, 1 mm long, with projecting large hilum, testa matt, with very small tubercles.

Locality: México, probably Queretaro or Hidalgo.

Notes

The mid-stripe on the outer perianth segments is reddish in the plants I have, not greenish as stated in the description.

Related taxa

Turbinicarpus pseudomacrochele ssp. krainzianus is part of the pseudomacrochele aggregate of taxa, together with the following:

References

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