Xerophyte

Leaves

Small, fleshy, ovoid or subulate, bright green, falling early.

Seeds

Usually one to five per fruit, very woolly, 6.5-10 mm broadt hick, disklike, laterally compressed.

Description

BrasiliSN'>6150' alt='6152'>Opuntia brasiliensis#SN#6152'>Brasili[[Opuntia brasiliensisSN' style='border

Flowers

Middle sized, diurmal, borne all over the plant from the prominent parts of the edges of the terminal joints or from the pericarpels of old flowers, shallowly saucer-shaped, bright lemon yellow to light brown, c. 4-6 cm long and wide, petals yellow, oblong, obtuse; filaments very short; staminodial hairs present between perianth parts and stamens.

Chromosome Number

2n = 22

Spines

1-3, thin, reddish or brownish, to 15 mm long, on young growth, more numerous on the trunk, or lacking.

Stem

Trunk, well-formed, woody, cylindric or tapering, slender from the base to the summit, 3 to 9 m tall (occasionally up to 20, or more metres), 20-35 cm in diameter at the base, unjointed; old trunk either naked or covered with fascicles of spines. Branches dimorphic, the lateral ones horizontal, 20-100 cm long more or less verticillate, few to several in each whorl, rounded and terete, that grow shorter toward the summit of the plant; the terminal joints rhomboid to obovate to oblong-lanceolate, irregular in outline, producing thin, flat, leaflike shoots or cladodes to 15 cm long, 6 cm wide, and 4-6 mm thick, bright to dark green, many of these in time dropping off.

Fruits

Spherical to pear shaped to oblong, 2.5-4 cm in diameter, yellow, orange-red, red, or purple, with a low or nearly truncate umbilicus, bearing large areoles with distinct clusters of dark brown glochids. The fruit is rather agreeable juicy with a fine acid somewhat resembling an indifferent hard fleshed or unripe Plum with a smell and slight flavour like the leaf stalks of Garden Rhubarb.

Areoles

With white hairs, producing brown glochids later.