Autor: Britton & Rose
• ETYMOLOGY
Genus honouring Francis Ernest Lloyd, an American botanist (1868-1947) who contributed to the work of Britton & Rose, and “neo”, because the genus Lloydia had already been used to designate a Liliaceae.
• DESCRIPTION
A genus of small low plants, caespitose, globular to cylindrical, with the epidermis yellowish-green or greyish-green and the apex woolly. Ribs virtually absent, tubercles well defined, conical, furrowed. Areoles divided in two parts, joined by a groove. Central spines straight, usually one or two, sometimes absent.
Flowers diurnal, self-sterile, funnel-shaped, appearing at the base of the areolar groove of young tubercles, magenta red or lilac, with a naked pericarpel, pollinated by insects. Fruits rather small, globose, greenish, naked, fleshy at the beginning, becoming dry when ripe, indehiscent. Seeds subglobose, tuberculate, matt, black.
• HABITAT
The genus Neolloydia grows between Mexico and the United States, in small scattered populations in a wide geographic range, in the shade or in full sun, on hillsides, terraces and limestone gravel, more rarely in gypsum, among xerophyllous shrubs, in grasses and moss, between 400 m and 2200 m in altitude.
• DISTRIBUTION
Mexico (Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas), USA (Texas).
Currently 3 species provisionally recognised:
– Neolloydia conoidea* (DC.) Britton & Rose 1923
– Neolloydia inexpectata D.Donati 2012
– Neolloydia matehualensis* Backeberg 1948
References: "TAXONOMY of the CACTACEAE" - ISBN 978-84-617-3692-8 (Vol. 2)