Xerophyte

Leaves

Subulate, caducous, 4 to 6 cm long, green with reddish tips.

Seeds

Tan or bronze coloured, irregularly discoid, 2-3 mm in diameter.

Description

Opuntia rufidaSN|15506]]SN|15516]] (a.k.a. Opuntia microdasysSN|15506]]SN|15506]] subs. rufida) is a fairly large shrubby or tree like, blue-green prickly pear, with several branches and rarely with a somewhat definite trunk to ca 1.5 m high and 2.5 m wide. Spines are absent but the joints have copious evenly spaced areoles in which numerous reddish glochids are borne. The common names in English (blind prickly pear) and Spanish (nopal cegador) come from the belief that the glochids are loose and supposedly may fly into the air when the plants are shaken. The dislodged glochids may get into the eyes of animals and cause severe problems.

Similar Species

This species seems much less common than Opuntia microdasysSN|15516]]SN|15506]], with which it is often confused.

Note

The name of the species comes from the Latin “rufus”, = reddish, with obvious reference.

Flowers

Pale yellow, becoming golden yellow to orange with age, usually from the areoles placed on the upper edge of the one year old cladodes, 4 to 6 (-7.5) cm long and in diameter. Tepals obovate, 2 to 2.5 cm long, the outer ones lanceolate, the inner ones obovate with almost truncated apex. Filaments greenish white or whitish, short, 1 cm long. Anthers

Blooming Season

This cactus is expected to bloom in spring to early summer (in habitat March and into May or June). Flowers open in mid- to late morning, close at night time, and often do not reopen.

Stem

More or less erect, 20 to 150 cm high, with a somewhat definite trunk. Joints (cladodes) nearly orbicular, obovate or elliptical 10-18 cm long and (5-)7-20(-25) cm in diameter, 1-1.5 cm thick, velvety-tomentose, dull grayish green or bluish green.Branches are not easily disarticulating.

Fruits

Globular, elliptical or obovate concave (umbilicate) at the apex, spine-less, reddish green to bright red at maturity, fleshy, slightly tuberculate, to (2-)2.5-3(-3.5) cm long, 1.5-2 cm in diameter with greenish pulp.

Areoles

Round, 3-3.2 mm in diameter, 5-20 mm apart, 8-13 per diagonal row on mid-stem segment, without spines but filled with a short white or bronze down and with numerous glochids. The glochids are brown or reddish ageing to grey and easily detached.