Jozka Neduchal

GENUS NOTOCACTUS Fric 1928

FRIC, A.V. (1928): CACTI the coming fashion, Price-List 1928:3

TYPUS: Notocactus schumannianus (Nicolai 1893) Fric 1928

BASIONYM: Echinocactus schumannianus Nicolai 1893

NICOLAI, J. (1893): Monatsschrift fuer Kakteenfreunde 3: 175-176. No further statement. Notocactus schumannianus ist also the lectotypus of the genus Notocactus Fric 1928.

BUILD: Depressed to elongated spherical, later sometimes thick columnar or more rarely offsetting, in some cases sprouting with underground offsets of very different appearance and great individual variability.

RIBS: Variable in number, mostly rather high and more or less sharp, also rounded. Frequently plants with spirally twisted ribs. Ribs mostly very sharply separated from each, often with striking hump.

AREOLES: The young areoles heavily to very heavily woolly, especially in flowering sized plants, sometimes the wool covering the apex, then the apex hollow is completly filled, later bare.

SPINES: The spination is very variable, mostly fine and needle-like to bristly, also strong or awl like, the radial spines sometimes very dense. In some species there are hooked central spines.

FLOWERS: The very conspicuous, mostly yellow, rarely orange, red, violet - to wine-red, silky gleaming flowers emerge from near the apex often in large numbers.

They are expanded funnel-shaped or over the ovary bell shaped. Ovaries and flower tube are usually densely covered with narrow dry edged to long hair like sharp scales, which are reduced sometimes at the ovary. In the shoulders the flowers bear without exception, or at least in the top part, thin needle-like or needle-like - bristly to long hair like, more or less tortuous spines, sometimes completely covered with woolly hairs. The somewhat linear - lanceolate petals vary sometimes also at the same species in their width, length and form in the area of the tip. The flower tube gradually expands funnel shaped over the ovary, in the plants of section Neonotocactus suddenly broadly bowl shaped. The numerous stamens arranged sometimes in apparently clearly distinguishable groups, up to the throat of the flower wall. The style more often towering over the stamens, carries mostly radiating or straight stigma lobes, these are mostly red. Fertilization relationships, irritability of the stamens are not clearly clarified in all species, there are self fertile and self sterile species.

FRUIT: Are often topped by the large flower remains. In the beginning soft fleshed and relatively small, later greatly elongating in some species, whereby the seeds remain often only in the top part of the fruit. The covering of the fruit with scale remains, wooly hairs and bristles is very variable. The fruit of the different species also open quite differently. In some species the fruit splits vertically, partially with a longitudinal split, in others horizontal, leaving behind some skin on the plant. At the section Wigginsia the fruit remains for a long time almost completely in the apical wool, it then quickly elongates to a form a tube and dries slowly and the fruit wall becomes brittle.

SEEDS: The seed is straight or slightly obliquely bell-shaped to hemispherical, with a basal flat to somewhat angled hilum-mycropylar region (HMR), which is usually somewhat larger than the diameter of the seed, mainly in the species where the edge of the hilum is excessive. Only in section Brasilicactus is the HMR somewhat smaller than the seed diameter. Somewhat in the middle of the HMR is a more or less clear, ovule curve, at the top of which lies the micropylar hole. The whole HMR is covered by a thin layer of loose tissue, which is usually more or less worn, so that the underlying testa cells shine through. The mostly black testa belongs to the warty type, it is always covered by the aril skin, which however mostly comes of when ripe. A Perisperm is barely exists; The embryo is oval and only has a small fissure between the cotyledons. There are no corky outgrowths in the seeds, as in Parodia.

DISTRIBUTION: From central Argentina to Uruguay to South Brazil (states of Rio Grande do Sul, St. Catarina, Parana) and Paraguay.