Description
Plants leafy and spiny, treelike, shrubby, and often scrambling. Majority species may be treelike or shrubby, 2 - 7 m high, heighest at 10 m. Pereskia aculeata forms clambering shrubs or climbing vines 3 - 10 m long. Roots sometimes thickened and tuberous. Leaves alternate, broad, flattened, deciduous, usually with petioles, 2 – 20 cm long. Areoles in the axils of the leaves, usually with wool, bearing spines and leaves. Spines 0 – 8 on young primary areolas on twigs, to numerous on trunk (15 - 40, max. 120), unequal in length 2 – 12 cm, straigh, usually black. Flowers solitary or in a inflorescences of 2 - 15 flowers (P. aceulata 70, P. grandiflora 10 – 30), 2 - 8 cm in diameter, usually pink, rose, purple, sometimes orange, yellow, white, cream. Fruits solitary or clustered, variable in shape, oblonge, pear shaped, usually green or yellowgreen in maturity, also orange, reddish, brownish, 2 - 7, max. 10 cm long. Three species have fruits very small, 0,5 – 1,5 cm globbose, glossy black. Seeds 2 – 7 mm large, obovate to kidney shaped, glossy black.
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