1625 ADDISONIA 
The plant is widely distributed through cultivation in tropical 
regions of both the Old World and the New, and is recorded by 
Burkill (Rec. Bot. Surv. India4: 292. 1911) asthus the most widely 
distributed of this genus. It is completely naturalized in Australia 
and in India, and there sometimes appears as if a native plant. It 
grows readily in southern California, southern France, and Cuba, 
and, presumably, may be grown successfully in southern Florida. 
In India and in South Africa, it was formerly much utilized as a host 
plant of the cochineal insect, before cochineal was replaced by other 
dyes. 
A race of the species with variegated joints, some green, others 
blotched with white or yellow, and others wholly white or yellow, 
is common in greenhouse cultivation. 
The name Opuntia vulgaris, as given by Miller as above cited, 
refers to this plant rather than to the wild prickly pear of the 
eastern United States, with which it has been associated in much 
botanical literature. The name vulgaris was based on the illus- 
tration by Bauhin (Hist. Pl. 1: 154. 1650), copied from Lobel’s 
figure (Icones 2: 241. 1581). It was thus one of the first cactuses 
known to European botanists, and, as it has a wide range in eastern 
South America, the name vulgaris is not at all inappropriate. 
The collections of the New York Botanical Garden contain 
plants of this species obtained from a number of places where it 
has been grown both in greenhouses and in the open, and also 
plants obtained by J. N. Rose in eastern South America during 
his exploration of that region in 1915. Our illustration is made from 
a plant obtained in California by Walter T. Swingle in 1905. 
N. L. BRITTon. 
