Opuntia phaeacantha (Brownspine Pricklypear)

Overview

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Interesting Facts

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Common Names

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Click on the language to view common names.

Common Names in English:

Brownspine Pricklypear, Brown-Spine Prickly-Pear, Brown-Spined Pricklypear, Desert Prickly Pear, Desert Prickly-Pear, Major Prickly-Pear, Mojave Prickly Pear, Mojave Prickly-Pear, New Mexico Prickly Pear, New Mexico Prickly-Pear, Prickly Pear, Purple-Fruit Prickly-Pear, Smooth Prickly Pear, Spineless Prickly Pear, Tulip Prickly Pear, Tulip Pricklypear, Yellow-Spine Prickly-Pear

Common Names in Spanish:

Nopal Pardo

Common Names in unspecified:

Brownspine Pricklypear, Tulip Pricklypear

Description

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Family Cactaceae

Fleshy perennials , shrubs , trees or vines , terrestrial or epiphytic. Stems jointed , terete , globose , flattened, or fluted , mostly leafless and variously spiny . Leaves alternate, flat or subulate to terete, vestigial, or entirely absent; spines, glochids (easily detached, small, bristlelike spines), and flowers always arising from cushionlike, axillary areoles (modified short shoots ) . Flowers solitary, sessile, rarely clustered and stalked (in Pereskia), bisexual , rarely unisexual , actinomorphic or occasionally zygomorphic. Receptacle tube (hypanthium or perianth tube) absent or short to elongate , naked or invested with leaflike bracts, scales , areoles, and hairs , bristles , or spines; perianth segments usually numerous , in a sepaloid to petaloid series. Stamens numerous, variously inserted in throat and tube; anthers 2-loculed, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary (pericarpel) inferior, rarely superior, 1-loculed, with 3 to many parietal (rarely basal) placentas; ovules usually numerous; style 1; stigmas 2 to numerous, papillate , rarely 2-fid. Fruit juicy or dry, naked, scaly , hairy , bristly , or spiny, indehiscent or dehiscent , when juicy then pulp derived from often deliquescent funicles (except in Pereskia) . Seeds usually numerous, often arillate or strophiolate ; embryo curved or rarely straight; endosperm present or absent; cotyledons reduced or vestigial, rarely leaflike.

About 110 genera and more than 1000 species: temperate and tropical America; Rhipsalis baccifera (J. S. Mueller) Stearn native in tropical Africa, Madagascar, Comoros, Mascarenes, and Sri Lanka; some species of other genera now extensively naturalized in the Old World through human agency; more than 60 genera and 600 species cultivated as ornamentals or hedges in China, of which four genera and seven species more or less naturalized.[1]

Genus Opuntia

Trees or shrubs , erect to trailing , usually many branched, sometimes forming clumps or mats; trunk , when present, initially segmented , appearing continuous with age, main axis determinate, usually terete . Stem segments green or sometimes reddish to purple, usually flattened, circular, elliptic , ovate , lanceolate, or obovate to oblanceolate , 2-60(-120) × 1.2-40 cm, nearly smooth to tuberculate , glabrous or pubescent ; areoles usually elliptic, circular, or obovate, 3-8(-10) × 1-7(-10) mm; wool white, gray, or tan to brown, aging white or gray to black. Spines 0-15+ per areole, white, yellow to brown, red-brown to gray, or black, sometimes partly to wholly white chalky (chalkiness disappearing when wet), aging gray to dark brown to black, with epidermis intact, not sheathed, acicular to subulate , sometimes setose or with hairlike bristles , terete to angular-flattened, to 75(-170) mm, tips sometimes paler or yellow. Glochids in adaxial crescent at margin of areole, in tuft or encircling areole margin, white to yellow to brown, or red-brown, aging white to brown or red-brown. Flowers bisexual or sometimes functionally staminate , radially symmetric ; outer tepals green to yellow with margins tinged color of inner tepals; inner tepals pale yellow to orange, pink to red or magenta, rarely white (unicolored) or with base of a different color (bicolored ), oblong to spatulate , emarginate-apiculate; nectar chamber simple , open, not covered by proximal thickening style. Pollen yellow, grains reticulate or foveolate (opuntioid type). Fruits sometimes proliferating (sprouting from another fruit), if fleshy , green, yellow, or red to purple or, if dry, tan to gray, straight, sometimes stipitate , clavate to cylindric , ovoid , or obovoid to subspheric, 10-120 × 8-120 mm, fleshy to juicy or dry, smooth or tuberculate, spineless or spiny , sometimes burlike. Seeds pale yellow to tan or gray, generally circular to reniform , flattened (discoid ) to subspheric, angular to squarish, sometimes warped, 2-7 × 2-7 mm, glabrous, commonly bearing 1-4 large, shallow depressions due to pressures from adjacent developing seeds; girdle protruding 0.3-3.5 mm, forming ridge or flat wing , or not protruding. x = 11.

Species ca. 150 species: widespread in North America, Mexico, West Indies, South America, including the GalÃ¡pagos Islands; some species introduced to and naturalized in the Old World.

Many taxa are cultivated for ornamental plants , food, and animal fodder . Some species of Opuntia become obnoxious weeds ; some species have been planted in Africa for stabilization of sand dunes.

Many interspecific hybrids are known and have been named; only five are fully treated here; two other named hybrids recognized by the author are briefly described and cross-referenced under putative parent taxa.[2]

Physical Description

Species Opuntia phaeacantha

Shrubs, decumbent to commonly trailing , 0.3-1 m. Stem segments not disarticulating , green to dark green, sometimes reddish under stress, flattened, obovate to circular, 10-25 × 7-20 cm, low tuberculate , glabrous ; areoles 5-7 per diagonal row across midstem segment, obovate to elliptic , 3-6 × 2-4 mm; wool tan to brown, aging grayish. Spines (0-) 2-8 per areole, at most areoles to only distal 1/4 of stem segment, or essentially absent, brown to white, straight, curved , or spirally twisted; major central spines deflexed or spreading , brown to red-brown (to blackish), or partly to wholly gray to tan, subulate , usually flattened near base , 30-80 mm; abaxial spines usually 1-3, deflexed, white, flattened, shorter, to 20 mm. Glochids dense in crescent at adaxial edge of areole and subapical tuft, tan to red-brown, to 5 mm. Flowers: inner tepals yellow with red basal portions (rarely entirely pink to red), 30-40 mm; filaments greenish basally, pale yellow to white distally; anthers yellow; style white; stigma lobes green to yellow-green. Fruits wine red to purple, with greenish flesh (sometimes reddish and ± juicy), not long stipitate , obovate to barrel-shaped, 30-50 × 20-30 mm, fleshy , glabrous, spineless; areoles 18-24. Seeds tan, subcircular, 4-5 mm diam., evidently notched , warped; girdle protruding 1 mm. 2n = 66. [source]

Much of the material formerly assigned to varieties of Opuntia phaeacantha has been segregated as O. engelmannii. Various combinations of overlapping character states make separation of O. phaeacantha var. major from var. phaeacantha impractical. Presumably var. major comprises sprawling to erect shrubs with obovate stem segments bearing usually few darker colored spines (usually one to three) per areole, in the distal half of the stem segment or less, whereas plants of var. phaeacantha are trailing shrubs with narrowly obovate stem segments bearing more spines (usually three to ten) per areole throughout most to all of the stem segment. Recently some workers have applied O. camanchica Engelmann & Bigelow to those plants with the very dark colored spines and merged vars. major and phaeacantha. Distinctions among taxa are further blurred by hybridization of O. phaeacantha with O. engelmannii, yielding several named and unnamed hybrids, including O. wootonii Griffiths. Morphologic and genetic analyses of the populations are needed before correct names can be assigned to many of these plants with confidence. [source]

Opuntia phaeacantha also hybridizes with O. aureispina (forming O. ×spinosibacca), O. ficus-indica, and O. littoralis (forming O. ×vaseyi), and members of the O. polyacantha complex , particularly near the regions of Grand Canyon and Four Corners. [source]

Habit: Deciduous.

Flowers: Bloom Period: April, May, June, July. • Flower Color: yellow

Size/Age/Growth

Size: 12-18" tall.

Habitat

Deserts, chaparral , surrounding mountains, plains , sandy to rocky soils; 200-2100 m [3].

Biology

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Reproduction

Duration: Perennial

Growth

Culture: Space 18-24" apart.

Soil: Minimum pH: 6.1 • Maximum pH: 7.8

Sunlight: Sun Exposure: Full Sun .

Moisture: Drought Tolerance: High

Temperature: Cold Hardiness: 9a, 9b, 10a, 10b. (map)

Taxonomy

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Domain: Eukaryota () - Whittaker & Margulis,1978 - eukaryotes
- Kingdom: Plantae () - Haeckel, 1866 - Plants
  - Subkingdom: Viridaeplantae () - Cavalier-Smith, 1981
    - Phylum: Tracheophyta () - Sinnott, 1935 ex Cavalier-Smith, 1998 - Vascular Plants
      - Subphylum: Euphyllophytina ()
        Infraphylum: Radiatopses () - Kenrick & Crane, 1997
        Class: Spermatopsida () - Brongniart, 1843
        Subclass: Caryophyllidae () - Takhtajan, 1967
        Superorder: Caryophyllanae () - Takhtajan, 1967
        Order: Caryophyllales () - Perleb, 1826
        Suborder: Portulacineae ()
        Family: Cactaceae () - Durande, 1782 ex A.L. de Jussieu, 1789, nom. cons. - cactus
        Subfamily: Opuntioideae ()
        Genus: Opuntia () - P. Miller, 1754 - Pricklypear, nopal [origin uncertain; possibly based on name of Greek town (Opus perhaps) where a cactus-like plant grew]
        Specific epithet: phaeacantha - Engelm.
        Botanical name: - Opuntia phaeacantha Engelm.

Synonyms

O. phaeacantha var. brunnea Engelmann • O. phaeacantha var. laevis (J. M. Coulter) L. D. Benson • O. phaeacantha var. major Engelmann • O. superbospina Griffiths • Opuntia angustata Engelmann & J. M. Bigelow

Notes

Name Status: Accepted Name .

Last scrutiny: 15-Mar-2000

Similar Species

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Members of the genus Opuntia

ZipcodeZoo has pages for 389 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and cultivars in this genus. Here are just 100 of them:

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Notes

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Contributors

Bisby, F.A., Y.R. Roskov, M.A. Ruggiero, T.M. Orrell, L.E. Paglinawan, P.W. Brewer, N. Bailly, J. van Hertum, eds (2007). Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2007 Annual Checklist. Species 2000: Reading, U.K.
Brands, S.J. (comp.) 1989-present. The Taxonomicon. Universal Taxonomic Services, Zwaag, The Netherlands. Accessed January 9, 2012.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Accessed November 08, 2007. http://www.gbif.org Mediated distribution data from 3 providers.
"Opuntia phaeacantha". in Flora of North America Vol. 4 Page 139. Published by Oxford University Press. Online at EFloras.org.
Ruggiero M., Gordon D., Bailly N., Kirk P., Nicolson D. (2011). The Catalogue of Life Taxonomic Classification, Edition 2, Part A. In: Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2011 Annual Checklist (Bisby F.A., Roskov Y.R., Orrell T.M., Nicolson D., Paglinawan L.E., Bailly N., Kirk P.M., Bourgoin T., Baillargeon G., Ouvrard D., eds). DVD; Species 2000: Reading, UK.
USDA, ARS, National Genetic Resources Program. Germplasm Resources Information Network - (GRIN) [Online Database]. National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland. URL (April 30, 2008)

Data Sources

Accessed through GBIF Data Portal November 16, 2007:

Berkeley Natural History Museums, University and Jepson Herbaria DiGIR provider
Missouri Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Arizona State University Vascular Plant Herbarium
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, The Deaver Herbarium, Northern Arizona University
USDA PLANTS, USDA PLANTS Database
Utah State University, USU-UTC Specimen Database
Utah Valley State College
, Utah Valley State College Herbarium

Identifiers

Biodiversity Heritage Library NamebankID: 2646185
Catalogue of Life Accepted Name Code: ITS-19724
Global Biodiversity Information Facility Taxonkey: 13784946
Globally Unique Identifier: urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:136906-1
GRIN Nomen Number: 310532
Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN): 19724
MoBot NameID: 5100078
Natural Heritage Network Species Identifier: PDCAC0D0Z0
U.S.D.A. Plant Symbol: OPPHN OPPH
Zipcode Zoo Species Identifier: 52639

Footnotes

Zhen-yu Li & Nigel P. Taylor "Cactaceae". in Flora of China Vol. 13 Page 209. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
Donald J. Pinkava "Opuntia". in Flora of North America Vol. 4 Page 93, 94, 95, 102, 123, 232, 381. Oxford University Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
"Opuntia phaeacantha". in Flora of North America Vol. 4 Page 139. Oxford University Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]

Opuntia phaeacantha

Overview

Interesting Facts

Common Names

Description

Family Cactaceae

Genus Opuntia

Physical Description

Species Opuntia phaeacantha

Size/Age/Growth

Habitat

Biology

Reproduction

Growth

Taxonomy

Synonyms

Notes

Similar Species

Members of the genus Opuntia

More Info

Further Reading

Notes

Contributors

Data Sources

Identifiers

Footnotes