Pancake Prickly Pear
Dollar-joint Pricklypear
Opuntia chlorotica
Photographed in the Wickenburg Mountains, Yavapai County, Arizona, USA. The image is hosted at higher resolution on the Wikimedia Project.
SHRUB:This prickly pear usually grows upright from a single
stem/trunk and exceptional specimens can reach 2
meters tall.
RANGE: A robust prickly pear of mid to upper elevations of the
Sonoran Desert. Also ranging into the Mohave and Chihuahuan Deserts.
SPINES: Many specimens in the Sonoran Desert have few larger
spines. Instead, the areoles are beset with great numbers of smaller glochids
that are extremely sharp and painfull.
JOINTS: The flattened stem joints are nearly circular in
outline and about 50 cm in dia.
FRUIT: Mature fruit is red but smaller and less juicy that
other prickly pears.
FLOWERS: Numerous petals are yellow.
Cactaceae -- Cactus Family
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Vulture Mountains sw of Wickenburg, Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. Look closely and see two nymphs of the leaf-footed bug Narnia, which penetrate the fruit with a long proboscis to feed upon the developing seeds.