Nopalea cochenillifera (L.) Salm-Dyck

• Title

  Nopalea cochenillifera (L.) Salm-Dyck

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Nopalea cochenillifera (L.) Salm-Dyck

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Nopalea cochenillifera Tuna de España Cochineal Cactus Family Cactaceae Cactus Family Cactus cochenillifer Linnaeus, Species Plantaruna 468. 1753. Opuntia Cochenillifera Miller, Gardener's Dictionary, edition 8, no.6. 1768. Nopalea cochenillifera Salm-Dyck, Cacteae in Horto Dyckensi 1849: 64. 1850. Cochineal is a dye substance, formerly obtained in commercial quantities from small insects living on this cactus and others, but since the discovery of aniline dyes, the industry has nearly disappeared; it was of prehistoric origin, found well established in Mexico by the Spanish in 1518, and soon afterward in Peru. The cacti were grown in extensive plantations called nopalries. The industry was taken from America to Spain, India, Africa, and the Canary islands, and was very profitable; the insects were brushed off from the plants two or three times a year, dried in various ways, thus forming the commercial product. As recently as 1868 more than 6,000,000 pounds, valued at $4,000,000 were exported from the Canary Islands alone. The original natural distribution of the plant is unknown; it has been widely established in tropical regions through planting, and is frequent in Porto Rico, but certainly not native. Relatives are indigenous in Mexico and Central America. Other popular names are Tuna mansa and French Prickly Pear. Nopalea (from nopal, the Mexican name), consists of 7 known species, of large, branching, flat-jointed cacti with cylindric trunks, the joints unarmed in the species here illustrated, but spiny in the others. The small, round leaves fall away soon after appearing on the young joints, and there are some minute, barbed bristles at the areoles. The flowers are borne solitary at areoles near the margins of the joints; the usually tubercled ovary is stalkless, and contains many ovules; the sepals are short, broad and pointed; the red or pink petals are erect, appressed against the numerous stamens; the stamens and the style are longer than the petals. The fruit is a large, fleshy, many-seeded berry. Nopalea cochenillifera (cochineal-bearing), the only species of the genus inhabiting Porto Rico, becomes 3 or 4 meters high, with a trunk up to 20 centimeters thick. Its oblong or elliptic joints are from 15 to 50 centimeters long, about 1 centimeter thick, or less. The scarlet flowers are often abundant near the ends of the joints, and about 5 centimeters long; the ovary is about 2, centimeters long: the unequal sepals are about 10 millimeters long or shorter; the petals are somewhat longer than the sepals, the stamens about twice as long as the petals and shorter than the very slender style, which is topped by a several-rayed stigma. The red, nearly globular berry is about 5 centimeters in diameter.