30 
yellow, at maturity deeper yellow and often sordid: Howers 
several on a joint: corolla yellow, salmon, or reddish, rotate, 6~8 
cm. wide; petals rather few, the inner broadly cuneate to broadly 
obovate, often mucronate: berries pyriform, 5-6 cm. long, purple: 
seeds numerous, 3-4 mim. in diameter. 
Hammocks along or near the coast, and sand-dunes, peninsular 
Florida and the Florida Keys. Bermuda, West Indies, and 
eastern Mexico. 
During the earlier period of Florida botany, Opuntia Dillenti 
was referred to under the specific names of plants to which it is 
really only distantly related. In fact its identity was not defi- 
nitely established until the beginning of the present century. 
This species is the common and typically maritime prickly- 
pear of our range, and also the most vigorous of the several 
different kinds. It is apparently the longest-lived and the 
healthiest of them all, seemingly wholly free from disease and 
also from insect pests. It grows either in perpetual shade or in 
exposed sunny localities and will stand almost any amount of 
ill-treatment and frequent transplanting for ornamental purpose 
with impunity. 
Although typically maritime and sometimes growing even in 
mangrove swamps or in low situations where the plants are 
partly submerged during high tide, it may be found equally 
vigorous on the high quiescent sand-dunes along the eastern 
coast of the Florida peninsula. 
In addition to producing the strongest and most thorough 
armament of our species, it is the most prolific in the matter of 
Howers and fruits. Plants or clumps of plants are often con- 
“picuous on account of large quantities of purple fruits, which 
are never equalled in numbers in the case of any of our other 
species. It is the Opuntia polyantha, at least in part, of Chap- 
man’s “Flora.” 
8. OPUNTIA stRicTA Haw. Syn. Pl. Succ. tg1. 1812 
(2) Opuntia Bentonii Griffiths, Rep. Mo. Bot. Gard. 22: 25. pl. 
Zand 2. 1912, 
Plant erect, but ultimately diffusely or widely branched, 
Mostly less than 1 m. tall, not tuberous: joints broadly spatulate, 
