PRICKLT PEARS NOW WILD IN INDIA. 
289 
Spain contains Opuntia decumana, and apparently Opuntia nana 
also {vide Boissier, Voyage dans le Midi d^ Espagne, i, 1839, p. 25). 
Opuntia leptocaulis, DC., is said by Karl Schumann, Ferhreitnng 
der Cactacem, p. 34, frequently to run wild in Europe. 
North Africa contains Opuntia decumana ^ and Opuntia nana. 
1905, p. 132). But again Urban in his Symholce Antillan(e, iv, (1910), p. 433, 
gives a very general distribution for Opuntia Tuna in the West Indies. As a study 
of the West. Indian Cacti is being made by Dr. N. L. Britton, of the New York 
Botanic Garden, we hope for further light from that quarter. 
Linnseus founded his Cactus Ficus-indicus in the Species Tlantarum., i, 
(1753), p. 468, on a plant which he had observed growing in the garden of George 
Clifford {Hmdus Cliffortianus, 1737, p. 183) and defined as “ Cactus compressus 
articulis ramosus, articulis ovatis oblongis, spinis subulatis,” and] on the third, not on 
the second, species of Tournefort’s list, viz., “ Opuntia major validissimis spinis 
munita,” and also on Sir Hans Sloane’s plant “ folio spinis longis et validissimis 
confertim nascentibus obsito.” 
Now the “ Opuntia Ficus-indica ” of the writers on the Mediterranean flora is 
something which has not the stars of long strong thorns. It is a plant 8—12 feet high, 
with very short deciduous thorns hardly longer than the glochidia, with yellow 
flowers, producing in its garden races fruits, in one race blood-red, in another race 
yellow, in a third race white, and with a fourth race seedless. Gussone in his 
Prodromics Fierce Siculce, i, (1827), p. 569, called that plant Cactus Opuntia : and 
Tenore in his Flora Napolitana, iv, (1830), p. 270, called it Opuntia vulgaris. But 
Gussone in his later Fierce Siculce Synopsis, (1842), p. 649, changed its name to 
Opuntia Ficus-indica. This name has persisted. All these writers evidently refer 
to the edible Opuntia decumana which is now commonly cultivated on the Kiviera, 
in Italy, Sicily, Malta and elsewhere. There is a figure of Opuntia decumana in 
Griffiths’ paper on the Spineless Prichly Pears in the United States Department 
of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bulletin No. 140, (1909), plate 1, fig. 2, 
Gussone has a var. b. of his “ Opuntia Ficus-indica ” which he describes as 
possessing a single thorn about twice as long as the glochidia. To this he refers 
Lobel’s figure. The variety is named in both, his works referred to, and is what 
Pojero in his Flora Sicula, i, pt. 2, (1891), p. 239, 'also defines as Opuntia Ficus- 
indica. Perhaps this variety, with one spine elongated, leads up to the Opuntia 
amyclcea of Tenore which Berger in the Gardeners' Chronicle, series 3, xxxiv, 
(1903), p. 93, says is only Opuntia Ficus-indica run wild and become more thorny. 
Opuntia amyclcea as figured by Tenore {Flora Napolitana, Atlas v, 1838, 
plate 236), has an orange flower ; but that circumstance would not separate it from 
Opuntia decumana, which typically is yellow flowered : because 0. decumana 
varies in regard to the colour of its flower. Labouret, Monographic de la familU dcs 
Cactacees (1850), p. 474, notices the variability in colour. 
* Steinheil {vide Roissier, loc. cit.) thinks that the Moors, when they were driven 
out of Spain by Phillip III, being almost all cultivators, must have taken with them 
an Opunt’a from Spain ; and though from the way in which he writes it seems as if 
Opuntia nana were the plant referred to, it would assuredly be Opuntia decumana. 
For a reference to Opuntia decumana in Algiers see Holmes’ Museum Fepof't, Phar. 
maceutical Society of Great Britain, for 1896—1902, (1903), p. 24. 
