MONILIFORMIS  N.H.G.Jacobsen, 2021

Section Filipedes

Distribution : Calitzdorp and environs, Succulent Karoo, growing under low shrubs and forming mats.

Description :

A succulent plant, prostrate to erect, branching, producing numerous dark red stilt roots.

Stems woody, glabrous, brownish becoming green and pinkish apically, to 2 mm in diam. At base.

Leaves glabrous, ellipsoid, cylindrical to cylindro-conical, slightly flattened above and very convex below, with acute, almost acuminate to occasionally obtuse apices, deciduous towards base of branches, to 9 x 6.4 mm (in cultivation). In the field leaves are tightly adpressed to branches with very short internodes, these are lengthening considerably  in cultivation. Hydathodes scattered on both surfaces and as a single row along margins.

Inflorescence a glabrous pedunculate flat-topped, few-flowered, branched thyrse, often with a single flower in the axils of the branches. Peduncle slender, 8 – 10 cm long, with a single (rarely two) pair(s) of bracts, these 1 – 1.5 mm long, triangular, acute, with a few scattered hydathodes dorsally.

Flowers pedicellate, campanulate, 2.5 – 2.8 mm long, white tinged pink to mauve and with a pinkish-mauve dorsal stripe on the petals, calyx glabrous, green tinged pinkish, sepals triangular, obtuse, about half as long as the flower, petals broadly elliptic, tapering to an acute, recurved apex, stamens almost as long as petals, anthers black.

Flowering time November – March.

Note :

C. moniliformis differs from C. expansa in its long bracteose peduncle and spherical ot branched thyrse as well as being rather woody than herbaceous. Its leaves are similar to those of C. expansa ssp. pyrifolia from northern Namaqualand.

First published in CactusWorld 39(3): 197 (2021).