Opuntia sp.

Opuntia, commonly called the prickly pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae, many known for their flavorful fruit and showy flowers. Prickly pear alone is more commonly used to refer exclusively to the fruit, but may also be used for the plant itself; in addition, other names given to the plant and its specific parts include tuna (fruit), sabra, nopal (pads, plural nopales) from the Nahuatl word nōpalli, nostle (fruit) from the Nahuatl word nōchtli, and paddle cactus. The genus is named for the Ancient Greek city of Opus, where, according to Theophrastus, an edible plant grew and could be propagated by rooting its leaves. The most common culinary species is the Indian fig opuntia (O. ficus-indica).

Description

O. ficus-indica is a large, trunk-forming, segmented cactus that may grow to 5–7 metres (16–23 feet) with a crown of over 3 m (10 ft) in diameter and a trunk diameter of 1 m (1 yard). Cladodes (large pads) are green to blue-green, bearing few spines up to 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) or may be spineless. Prickly pears typically grow with flat, rounded cladodes (also called platyclades) containing large, smooth, fixed spines and small, hairlike prickles called glochids that readily adhere to skin or hair, then detach from the plant. The flowers are typically large, axillary, solitary, bisexual, and epiperigynous, with a perianth consisting of distinct, spirally arranged tepals and a hypanthium. The stamens are numerous and in spiral or whorled clusters, and the gynoecium has numerous inferior ovaries per carpel. Placentation is parietal, and the fruit is a berry with arillate seeds. Prickly pear species can vary greatly in habit; most are shrubs, but some, such as Opuntia galapageia of the Galápagos, are trees.

Species

Opuntia hybridizes readily between species. This can make classification difficult, yielding a reticulate phylogeny where different species come together in hybridization. Opuntia also has a tendency for polyploidy. The ancestral diploid state was 2n=22, but many species are hexaploid (6n = 66) or octaploid (8n = 88).

Species accepted by Plants of the World Online, as of October 2022, are listed below, together with some species accepted by other sources, where the name preferred by Plants of the World Online is also given.

• Opuntia abjecta Small ex Britton & Rose
• Opuntia aciculata Griffiths – Chenille prickly pear, old man's whiskers, cowboy's red whiskers

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Opuntia - Wikipedia

https://youtu.be/obG1s675U84

• Opuntia engelmannii Salm-Dyck ex Engelm. – Engelmann's prickly pear, cow's-tongue prickly pear, desert prickly pear, discus prickly pear, Texas prickly pear, calico cactus; hexaploid (2n=66)