Opuntia. CACTACEA5. 247 
angular, variously colored: large purple flowers open only in sunlight: ovary and 
fruit with 25 to 30 spiny areolae, 15 to 20 upper sepals, and as many lance-oblong 
petals: stigmas about 12, erect.—Am. Jour. Sci. 2 ser. xiv. 338; Cact. of Pacif. 
R. Rep. iv. 35, t. 5, fig. 4 -10. 
From the eastern slopes of the Southern Sierra Nevada, at San Felipe, into Arizona and Utah, 
apparently abundant, Parry, Newberry, Palmer, and others. Heads usually 4 to 6 together, 5 to 
10 inches high, 2 or 3 thick ; outer spines \ to f, inner 1 or 2 inches long ; flowers 2J to 3 inches 
long and wide, appearing in June. 
§ 2. Prismatic or cylindric, mostly branching : flowers usually longer than- wide : 
stigmas whitish: seeds obovate, usually smooth or pitted: embryo with foli- 
aceous curved cotyledons. — -Eucereus. 
* Ovary and fruit spiny. 
2. C. Emoryi, Engelm. Stems erect, branching from the base, cylindric, with 
16 to 20 ribs, closely set with prominent hemispherical areolse bearing numerous 
(30 to 50) thin straight yellow spines J to 1 or If inches long; the 3 to 6 inner 
ones longer and deflexed: .flowers short, greenish yellow, crowded on one side of the 
top of the stems : ovary with few short spines, which become formidable upon the 
subglobose fruit. — Am. Jour. Sci. L e.; Cact. Mex. Bound. 40, t. 60, fig. 1 — 4. 
On the gravelly mesas near the sea-shore at San Diego {Parry, Agassiz, Hitchcock), and quite 
abundant on rocky hills from Los Angeles to the Salinas Valley {Brewer), and into the Peninsula 
to Rosario, Gabb. Stems 2 to 4 feet high, 1J to 2 inches thick, often from a prostrate rooting 
base, and forming dense thickets ; areolse 2 lines wide and 3 or 4 lines apart, densely covered 
with the thin sharp and very brittle spines ; flowers usually on one side only, like those of § Pilo- 
cereus, 1| to inches long and a little less wide ; fruit about an inch long ; seeds over a line 
long, shining, minutely tuberculate. 
% * Ovary and fruit scaly. 
C. GIGANTEUS, Engelm., 15 to 30 or even 40 feet high, very stout, with few erect branches 
towards the upper part, cream-white short-tubed flowers, and large oval edible fruit, which at 
maturity bursts irregularly, and 
C. Thxjrberi, Engelm., 10 to 15 feet high, more slender, with many equally high ascending 
branches from the base, similar flowers, and larger globose delicious fruits, are found in the 
adjoining territories of Arizona and Lower California, and may be looked for in this State. 
§3. Tall, cylindric, mostly unbranched; upper flower-bearing portion -with more 
crowded areoloe and longer denser thinner bristly or hairy spines: flowers 
short: seeds as in the last. — Pilocereus. 
C. Sohottii, Engelm., 4 to 10 feet high, the lower part 5-angled, with distant areolse and few 
very short and stout spines ; the upper flowering portion deeply 5-ribbed, with close-set areolae 
bearing numerous setaceous spines, almost hiding the small flowers and small berries,—from 
the same localities as the last two species,—may also be found in Southern California. 
4. OPUNTIA, Tourn., Miller. 
Tube of the flower very short, cup-shaped. Petals spreading or rarely erect. 
Ovary with bristle-bearing areolse in the axils of small terete deciduous sepals. 
Berry succulent or sometimes dry, marked with bristly or spiny areolse, truncate 
with a wide umbilicus. Seeds large, white, compressed, with the embryo coiled 
around the albumen: cotyledons large, foliaceous. — Articulated much-branched 
plants, of various shapes, low and prostrate, or erect and shrub-like;, young branches 
with small terete subulate early deciduous leaves, and in their axils ah areola with 
numerous short easily detached bristles and, usually, stouter spines, all. barbed. 
Flowers on the joints of the previous year, on the same areolse with the spines, 
mostly large, open only in sunlight. Fruit often edible, often large. 
w 
Botanical 
