Commemorating Professor F.E. Lloyd (fl. 1922). The Greek prefix neo—new, distinguished this genus from the genus Lloydia Rchb.
Body solitary or clustering, ovoid to compressed spherical or shortly cylindrical, mostly less than 15 cm tall and 12 cm wide, tuberculate. Areoles circular at tips of tubercles, rarely with 2 parts connected by a groove. Spines more or less straight, central ones from 1-8, radial 3-32 variously coloured. Flowers funnel-shaped, borne at body apex, mostly 3-8 cm wide; spring and summer. Pericarpel naked or with 1-2 scales; flower tube narrow and short. Fruit dry, rarely with a few scales and mostly splitting legthwise.
Some of the specimens in the key are found only in collections.
Fruit dry becoming thin and papery; decorative spines. Similar to Thelocactus but generally smaller and with few, if any, scales on tube and pericarpel.
About 12 species from E Mexico and SW Texas.
Anderson (1986).
Source: (1997). Cactaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
