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Opuntia leptocarpa Mackensen.

Return to Opuntia leptocarpa images.

(Original description: transcrbed from Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 38: 141. 1911)

Opuntia leptocarpa sp. nov.

Plants with somewhat flesh, terete, or sometimes thick-tuberous, roots; stems mostly ascending, rarely 5 dm high; joints thin, obovate to oval and elliptic, somewhat gaucous while young, deep green when older, or paler in age, mostly 1 to 2 dm but sometimes 2.5 dm long, with subulate leaves 5 to 8 (or Sometimes 10) mm in length; areoles remote, rather small, filled with reddish brown bristles and pale wool when young, the bristles 1 to 7 mm long and growing dirty brown with age, the lower areoles usually naked, the upper bearing 1 to 4 or sometimes 5 unequal spines, or on some joints mostly spineless; spines whitish, light brown, or mottled, slender, 1 to 3 cm long or sometimes longer, flattened to nearly terete, twisted, spreading, or sometimes the lowest spine of an areole much reflexed; flowers yellow with a pale reddish brown (or sometimes darker) center, about 7 cm broad and 8 to 10 cm long; petals 4 cm long, obovate, with a large cusp; stigmata white, 6- to 8-lobed, about equaling the stamens; fruit elongated (2.5 to 3.5 cm thick, 5 to 9 cm long, or sometimes longer), consisting of an elliptic body, with a narrow (often funnelform) umbilicus and a more or less stipiform base, which is sometimes equal in length to the body but usually shorter, the fruit in ripening becoming purplish throughout and finally crimson externally, the base becoming colored ardily, the taste nauseous; seeds suborbicular, nearly or fully 4 mm in diameter, when dry gray with a buff margin.

The plant blooms in April and May and produces an abundance of fruit, which ripens in August and September.  The fruit is sometimes proliferous.

This species is intermediated between the groups represented by Opuntia macrorhiza and O. lindheimeri, respectively.  It differs from both in a large proportion of the points covered by the description, so that it is necessary to consider it a distinct species.  The slenderness of the frui is very characteristic, hence the specific name.

The description was drawn from plants growing in the their native habitat near San Antonio, Texas, and here, too, the type material was collected in 1910.  The type is No. 618292 in the U. S. National Herbarium.