OPUNTIA. 



205 



10 cm. wide, i to 1.5 cm. thick, light green; branchlets obUquely lanceolate, obtuse, as wide as 

 the branches, but shorter, i cm. thick or less, floriferous at and near the apex; areoles of the older 

 branches pitted, about i cm. apart, those of very young shoots slightly elevated, the glochids very 

 short, yellowish brown; spines of the trunk 15 cm. long or less, very numerous and densely clothing 

 the trunk, very slender, gray, mostly strongly reflexed, pungent, those of the branches and branch- 

 lets restricted to the areoles on their edges, shorter than those of the trunk but similar, purple when 



spinosissima. 



young, those of the fruit yellowish gray, 2 cm. long or less; flowers cupulate, crimson-lake, i cm. 

 wide; sepals fleshy, ovate, acute, 4 mm. long and wide; petals erect-ascending, obovate, mucro- 

 nulate, about 4 mm. wide; stamens half as long as the corolla; style about as long as the corolla; 

 stigma-lobes oblong, yellowish crimson; fruit compressed-obovoid, 2 cm. long, 1.5 cm. thick, bear- 

 ing one or two spines at most of the areoles. 



