Growing in shaded canopies of wet forests is this Central American epiphytic cactus species of Disocactus. Its flattened green stems are so thin that they can easily fool a collector into thinking at first that these are leaves with coarsely serrate margins, but flowers eventually appear in the sinuses, where the axillary bud is located. This genus is most closely related to Nopalxochia and Heliocereus, also of Central America, and now cactus systematists classify all of these within the same genus, Disocactus. Disocactus is totally unrelated to species of Rhipsalis and Schlumbergera, which belong instead to a different tribe of the cactus family.

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