Pachypodium brevicaule Baker

DESCRIPTION:  is the smallest and more strange species in the genus, with a remarkable rock-mimic caudex remembering a sack of potatoes with sparse leaves. It is truly a beautiful sight to see a large specimen covered with hundreds of bright yellow flowers. Stem: At first like a potato tuber, eventually bizarrely compressed like a blob (sometimes described as a cow-pie) up to 30 cm in diameter (but eventually up to 1 m in diameter in the wild) and rarely over a 10cm tall, silver in color, with short spines and very reduced branches distinguishable as lobes on the overall 'blob' shape subtending rosettes of leaves. Leaves: In scattered compact rosettes, elliptic. 2-4 long and 1-1,6 cm wide, pubescent in the bottom side. Inflorescence: Compact cymes with 2-6 flowers. Flowers: Bright yellow. 2-3 cm across. Corolla-tube narrow 1,7-2,5 cm in diameter. subsp. leucoxanthum has white flowers.

DISTRIBUTION: Madagascar