| | The genera of Cactaceae |
Including Eccremocactus Britton & Rose, Eccremocereus Fric & Kreuz. (orth. var.), Werckleocereus Britton & Rose
The plants laticiferous; cerioid; not ‘low and very compacted’. The stems spiny, or not spiny. The plants epiphytic, or lithophytic; producing aerial roots (usually), or not producing aerial roots; branched; with cladodes (with distally flattened branches), or without cladodes. The cladodes when present, without midribs. The plants prostrate, or erect, or pendent; arching or climbing, shrubby. The branches cylindrical, or angled, or cylindrical and angled, or flattened and angled, or flattened and cylindrical (often round basally and angled-cylindrical or flattened distally); to (where recorded) 40–300 cm long; 0.6–15 cm in diameter. The stems not segmented; ribbed and grooved. The ribs 2–5; longitudinal; with lobed or toothed margins. The grooves wide. The plants conspicuously tuberculate to not conspicuously tuberculate (depending on interpretation of notched and lobed margins). The tubercles connected by the ribs; borne in longitudinal series. The areoles associated with tubercles to not tubercle-associated; distant; borne in longitudinal series; small, simple. The flowering areoles resembling the non-flowering ones. The areoles woolly, or not woolly; with spines, or without spines. The spines when present, solitary, or paired to clustered; (0–)1–40; 0.1–1.6 cm long; showing little or no difference between radials and centrals; straight to curved. The mature stems leafless.
Flowering at night. The flowers lateral; one per areole; shortly funnelform to campanulate; sessile; medium-sized to large; 3–10 cm long; regular. The receptacle conspicuously produced beyond the ovary into a tubular hypanthium. The pericarpel "bearing scales and areoles with bristles or hairy spines". The hypanthial tube rather stout; not naked; with scales. The axils of the scales of the hypanthial tube not naked (with hairy or bristly areoles). The hypanthial tube with spines, or spineless (?). The perianth sequentially intergrading from sepals to petals, or petaline, or of ‘tepals’; pink, or white to cream, or green. Stamens numerous; adnate to the perianth; inserted in a zone above the nectar chamber, and in a circle around the throat.
The mature fruit 2–7 cm long; globose, or ovoid, or ellipsoidal; yellow, or red; naked, or not naked (often tuberculate and/or with spines or bristles); spiny, or without spines; fleshy; indehiscent (?). The seeds black; ovoid; not encased in bony arils; with hilum and micropyle fused; with a mucilage sheath. The testa minutely spotted. Cotyledons reduced or vestigial.
Natural Distribution. Southern Mexico, south through Central America into Ecuador, and concentrated in Costa Rica.
Classification. 9 species. Subfamily Cactoideae. Tribe Hylocereeae.
Cf. Hunt (1967).
Images. • Weberocereus tunilla, W. biollegi, W. tonduzii (as Werckleocereus), W. glaber (as Werckleocereus): Britton & Rose (1920). • Weberocereus panamensis, with Selenicereus spinulosus and S. pteranthus: 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’.
