72 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
6.3-7.5 cm. across, pressing out to as much as 9.5 cm.; petals 8-12, 
mucronate, 2.5-3.2 cm. wide; cluster of stamens 3.8-4.5 cm. in 
natural spread. The red center of the flower is patterned as a 
star, its rays tapering out beyond the stamens along the mid- 
veins of the petals. Larger stems, 10.5 dm. long, may bear as 
many as thirty joints, these narrowly oblong to obovate, becoming 
18 cm. long and 8 cm. wide, occasionally narrow and trigonous. 
Fruits often seven, sometimes nine, on one joint, marginal or one 
or more also lateral, mostly 3.75-4 cm. long, commonly narrowed 
from apex to base, when lateral sometimes 5.5 cm. long. Base of 
the plant bulbous, becoming woody and much enlarged; main 
root horizontal and greatly elongated; a root carefully excavated 
Sept. 7, 1904 was nine and a half feet in length. 
Two species of cactus have been attributed to Nantucket 
doubtless with reference to the spiny and spineless plants found on 
Coatue. These are not to be regarded as other than forms or 
varieties of one species. They do indeed stand well apart in the 
one character of armature, and it is probably true that some plants 
always produce spines and that others never do. But the flowers 
of each are essentially the same, although a close comparison, 
made on the one occasion when the plants were found in bloom, | 
makes it possible to say that those of the spiny form were quite 
generally a trifle the smaller with slightly narrower petals, and 
usually a little more color—the red a shade deeper and the yellow 
just perceptibly brighter. A very small proportion of the un- 
armed form bear a few spines, sometimes not more than one oF 
two and only on a single one of the joints. 
I have not used any specific name for this cactus believing 
that two distinct species of Opuntia belong to our eastern flora 
and that it will therefore need to be determined to which one 
the current names Opuntia vulgaris Mill. and Opuntia Opuntia 
(L.) Coult. properly belong. Among the rocky hills on Manhattan 
Island and beyond, near Van Cortlandt Park, and in Bronx Park, 
there grows a cactus which is to me not at all the same species 
as the sand inhabiting littoral plant found on Nantucket. It 
thrives on rocky knolls in hilly woodland, either quite exposed to 
the sun or in partial shade, and has smaller flowers, which are — 
light yellow throughout with never the faintest tinge of red, as Ia 
