Succulent shrubs or tree-like, usually much-branched, often with well-developed trunks. Stems erect, ascending, or prostrate, sometimes with annual constrictions, cylindric to prismatic, longitudinally ribbed or angled, often glaucous. Ribs 3–20+, usually pronounced. Areoles woolly. Flowering areoles undifferentiated or ± spineless. Spines often present, acicular, numerous. Flowers medium to large, funnelform, nocturnal. Pericarpel and hypanthium elongate, thick, naked or nearly so below and with scattered scales above, areoles absent. Perianth broad, or moderately so, usually white. Fruit globose, ovoid to obloid, succulent, naked, usually red or sometimes yellow or orange, rarely pink or red, dehiscing along 1–3 lines when mature; withered perianth and stamens usually deciduous but the style usually persistent. Seeds large, curved, ovoid, smooth to tuberculate, dull or glossy black-brown or brown.
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