Opuntia dillenii (Ker Gawl.) Haw.

• Title

  Opuntia dillenii (Ker Gawl.) Haw.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Opuntia dillenii (Ker Gawl.) Haw.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Opuntia Dillenii Tuna brava Prickly Pear Family Cactaceae Cactus Family Cactus Dillenii Ker-Gawler, Botanical Registar 3: plate 255. 1818. Opuntia Dillenii Haworth, Supplementum Plantarum Succulentarum 79. 1819. The Prickly Pear, so called from its armament, and its somewhat pear-shaped fruit, is the commonest and most widely distributed cactus of tropical and subtropical America, growing throughout the West Indies, in northern South America, in eastern Mexico, in the southeastern United States and in Bermuda. It has been introduced through cultivation into warmer parts of the Old World, and established, in places, as a pernicious weed and a pest to Agriculture, as in India and Australia. It appears in much literature as Opuntia Tuna, but that quite different species is now understood to be restricted to the southern side of Jamaica; while characteristically a coastal plant, growing in greatest abundance within saline influence, it extends inland locally; in Porto Rico it is most plentiful along and near the southern coast. Four other native, smaller species of Opuntia occur in the Porto Rico Flora, mostly in the dry southwestern districts, and a much larger one, the nearly spineless Tuna or Indian Fig, is commonly planted there. The smallest of the native ones, called Olaga or Suckers, is a nuisance locally from Aguirre westward, its very prickly, small joints falling apart and becoming attached to animals. The generic name Opuntia is recorded as having been taken from a town in Greece, where one of the species, or some other similar plants grew early in the 18th century or before; it was used by the French botanist Tournefort about 1700, and defined by Miller in 1754. The number of species now known exceeds 250, all American, growing from Massachusetts and British Columbia to the Strait of Magellan. They are fleshy, jointed, branched plants, the joints, in most kinds, flat, in many round; most of them form clumps without a definite trunk, the branches spreading or prostrate. The joints appear to be leafless, but they do have small, scattered leaves when young, soon falling away, borne with tufts of small, barbed bristles (glochides), and usually with one or more spines; these tufts of bristles are at points termed areoles, and at these the flowers also appear. The flowers are stalkless and usually only one at an areole; the ovary is below the calyx and corolla and is 1-celled, contains many ovules, and bears areoles similar to those on the joints; the several sepals usually grade into the mostly yellow or red, widely spreading, larger petals; there are many, short stamens, and there is a stout style topped by a several-lobed stigma. The fruit is various in the different species, juicy and edible, or dry and densely spiny, many-seeded. Opuntia Dillenii (named in honor of Dillenius, who first illustrated it) is seldom more than 2 meters high, usually lower, and much-branched. Its joints are flat, rather thick, from 7 to 40 centimeters long, green or bluish-green, oblong to elliptic or obovate, wavy-marginal; the leaves, to be seen on young joints, are about 5 millimeters long; there are usually from 1 to several spines at the areoles, from 1 to 7 centimeters long, but spineless races of the species exist; the numerous, irritating glochides are yellow or brownish; the flowers are typically yellow, but sometimes red, showy, with broad petals, 4 or 5 centimeters long; the style and stigma are white. The purplish, edible, spineless fruit varies from pear-shaped to nearly globular, and from 5 to 8 centimeters long.