Shrubs, often treelike, erect or old plants with branches usually ascending, clambering, or prostrate, sparingly branched or unbranched. Roots diffuse (sometimes tuberlike). Stems unsegmented, green, long cylindric, 100-600 × 2.5-6 cm, glabrous; ribs 8-12, rounded, low, less than 1 cm deep, shallowly to indistinctly tuberculate; areoles ca. 2 cm apart along ribs, circular to oval, short woolly, sometimes subtended by small, subulate, deciduous leaves; areolar glands not apparent; cortex and pith mucilaginous. Spines 6-17 per areole, usually porrect to ascending, white to pinkish or yellow to light brown, aging gray, sometimes with tips darker or yellowish, acicular, straight, ± terete, 10-40 × 0.5-0.75[-1.5] mm, hard, smooth and glabrous; radial spines and central spines not clearly distinguishable. Flowers nocturnal, remaining open next day, lateral or terminal on stems at least 1 year old, funnelform, 12-20[-25] × 8-12 cm; outer tepals green to reddish or purplish, linear to lanceolate or narrowly oblong, 50-60 × 4.5-6 mm, margins entire; inner tepals white to pinkish, 60 -75 × 12-20 mm, margins entire or denticulate; ovary usually conspicuously tuberculate, scaly, spineless or spines represented by soft and silky to stiff hairs [or spiny]; scales entire; stigma lobes 8-15, yellow-green to white, 6-9 mm. Fruits indehiscent or splitting irregularly from apex toward base, green to yellow, red, or orange-red, spheric to ovoid-spheric, [30-]40-75[-80] × [30-]40-75[-80] mm, usually spineless (or spines bristlelike) [or slender acicular]; scales deciduous [sometimes persistent]; pulp white; floral remnant usually persistent. Seeds black, broadly ovoid or broadly ellipsoid, 2-3 × 1.5 mm, warty. x = 11.
| Name | Language | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applecactus [for William H. Harris, 1860-1920, Superintendent of Public Gardens and Plantations of Jamaica] |
|
