Plant: a spiny succulent shrub, with the main stem much reduced and quite buried in the ground or projecting very shortly above ground, producing many suberect branches or the older branches spreading and ascending, some of them having a few secondary branches, ultimately forming clumps up to l m high and 2 m in diameter; branches 4 or 5-angled or occasionally only 3-angled, irregularly constricted into segments according to the annual growth, the segments 2 to 15 cm long and usually thickest below the middle and there 2.5 to 4.5 cm thick, grooved or nearly flat between the angles, the grooves deepest in the 5-angled branches, dark or light green, usually with yellowish-green V-shaped markings radiating from the grooves, but some plants entirely without such markings; angles straight or rarely spirally twisted, irregularly sinuate-tubercled, with the tubercles 1 to 1.5 cm apart; spine shields united into a continuous horny margin along the angles; flowering eyes about half way or lower between the spine pairs; Spines: in pairs at the apex of the tubercles, more or less than 1 cm long, shortest at the constrictions of the angles, moderately stout, at first brown soon becoming grey; Leaves: not described, probably very rudimentary and soon deciduous; Inflorescence: cymes 1 to 3 together from each flowering eye, peduncled; the cymes consisting of 3 cyathia vertically disposed, the central one male and the 2 lateral ones bisexual, all sessile; peduncles about 2 mm long, bearing 2 bracts at the apex subtending the lateral involucres; bracts broadly ovate; involucre cup-shaped, 6 to 7 mm in diameter, with 5 glands and 5 subquadrate, fimbriate lobes; glands about 3 mm in their greater diameter, transversely oblong, entire, glabrous, yellow; Pistillate flower: ovary subsessile, obtusely 3-angled, the angles becoming subacute with age; ovule in each cell subglobose, with the connective tissue of the cell walls swollen and forming a hood-like flap above it; styles about 3 mm long, united into a column at the base for less than half their length, free above, the free portion grooved on the upper surface, with bifid tips; Capsule: subacutely 3-angled, 1.2 to 1.4 cm across from angle to angle; seeds subglobose, about 3 mm in diameter.
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