CACTACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 
OPUNTIA FULGIDA. 
Cholla. 
Joints of the branches pale olive-colored, easily separable, their tubercles broad, 
mamillate, full and rounded below the areole; spines yellow. Flowers pink. Fruit 
dull green, proliferous, usually spineless. 
Opuntia fulgida, Engelmann, Proc. Am. Acad. iii. 306 
(1856) ; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. ii. 57, t. 75, £. 18; 
Wheeler’s Rep. vi. 131. — Walpers, Ann. v. 56. — Hems- 
ley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 551. — Toumey, Garden and 
Forest, viii. 324, £. 46 ; Bot. Gazette, xxv. 119. — Coulter, 
Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iii. 448. —Schumann, Monog. 
Cact. 676. i 
Opuntia fulgens, Engelmann, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. 
i. 250 (1876). 
- A tree, with a more or less flexuous trunk occasionally twelve feet in height and sometimes a foot 
in diameter, a symmetrical head of stout wide-spreading branches,’ and thick pendulous joints which 
are sometimes almost hidden by their long conspicuous spines and which begin to develop their woody 
skeletons during their second or occasionally not until their third season. The bark of the trunk and of 
the large limbs is about a quarter of an inch in thickness and separates freely on the surface into 
large thin loosely attached scales which vary in color from dark yellow-brown to nearly black on the 
largest stems, and is nearly destitute of spines which mostly fall with the outer layers when the 
branches are from three to four inches in thickness. The terminal or ultimate joints of the branches 
are ovate or ovate-cylindrical, tumid, crowded at the ends of the limbs, pale olive-colored, from three 
to eight inches long and often two inches in diameter; their tubercles are ovate-oblong, broad, and 
from one half to three quarters of an inch in length, with areole of pale straw-colored matted 
tomentum, and short slender pale bristles; when they first appear each areola bears from five to fifteen 
stout stellate-spreading light yellow spines of nearly equal length, from three quarters of an inch to an 
inch long, and inclosed in loose lustrous sheaths; during succeeding years additional spines develop at 
the upper margins of the areole, and tubercles on old branches are sometimes furnished with from forty 
to sixty spines which remain on the branches from four to six years. The leaves are light green, 
from one half of an inch to nearly an inch in length, and taper gradually to the acuminate apex. The 
flowers appear from June to September, the first being produced from tubercles at the ends of the 
branches of the previous year, the later from the terminal tubercles of the immature fruit developed 
from the earliest flowers of the season. They are an inch in diameter when fully expanded, with 
ovaries nearly an inch long, from eight to ten orbicular obtuse crenulate sepals, five erect stigmas, and 
eight light pink petals,” those of the outer ranks being cuneate, retuse, crenulate on the margins, and 
shorter than those of the inner ranks, which are lanceolate and acute, the whole corolla becoming 
strongly reflexed at maturity. The fruit, which is proliferous, hangs in pendulous clusters usually 
with six or seven fruits, and occasionally with forty or fifty, in a cluster, one growing from the other in 
continuous succession, the first of the cluster being the largest and containing perfect seeds while the 
1 “T suspect that the long surface roots enable these plants to 
get their moisture from the rains which seldom penetrate the soil 
to a greater depth than from six to twelve inches. I have never 
seen tuberous enlargements on the fibrous roots.” (Toumey, in 
litt.) 
2 The plant of Lower California which is believed to be of this 
species is said to have yellow petals. (See K. Brandegee, Ery- 
thea, v. 122 [Notes on Cactec].) 
In the early descriptions of this species the petals were said to 
be purple, but according to Professor Toumey, who has had the 
best opportunity of studying the Cacti of Arizona and adjacent 
regions, and to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of these 
tree Opuntias, they are purple only after they are dried. 
