Autor: Spegazzini
• ETYMOLOGY
Genus honouring Lorenzo Raimundo Parodi, Argentine agricultural engineer and botanist (1895-1966).
• DESCRIPTION
A genus of small globose to shortly columnar, solitary or caespitose plants, with the apex depressed, with ribs defined or divided into tubercles. Spines straight, curved or hooked.
Flowers diurnal, usually self-sterile, funnel-shaped to bell-shaped, appearing near the apex, with a scaly pericarpel and receptacle, having woolly hairs and bristles in axils, yellow, orange or intense red, pollinated by insects, usually hymenoptera (Schlindwein & Wittmann 1995, in Emerson 2007). Fruits rather small, globose to more or less cylindrical, fine, hollow and dry or semi-dry, woolly, basally dehiscent, floral remains persistent. Seeds rather small, tiny in some species, black or brown, matt, spherical, reticulate, sometimes with a large aril. Dispersal of seeds, according to their structure, ensured by ants (myrmecochory), also by rainwater (hydrochory).
• HABITAT
The genus Parodia s.s. grows in very different biotopes, on arid rocky grounds, masses of fallen rocks, from plains up to high mountains, around quebradas (deep valleys), among bushes, in hollows of rocks, including on compact clumps of Abromeitiella, a Bromeliad (P. chrysacanthion), from 1000 m up to 2500 m in altitude. Some species like P. microsperma withstand heavy nocturnal frosts during winter.
• DISTRIBUTION
Argentina (Catamarca, Jujuy, Salta, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman), Bolivia (Cochabamba, Tarija).
Currently 8 proposed species:
– Parodia ayopayana* Cardenas 1951
– Parodia chrysacanthion* (K.Schum.) Backeb. 1935
– Parodia formosa F. Ritter 1964
– Parodia gibbulosoides F.H.Brandt 1971
– Parodia horrida F.H.Brandt 1979
– Parodia microsperma* (F.A.C.Weber) Speg. 1923
– Parodia nivosa Backeb. 1934
– Parodia penicillata Fechser & Steeg 1960
References: "TAXONOMY of the CACTACEAE" - ISBN 978-84-617-3692-8 (Vol. 2)