Opuntia vulgaris Mill.:
Madagascar (Africa & Madagascar)
United States (North America)
South Africa (Africa & Madagascar)

Note: This information is based on publications available through Tropicos and may not represent the entire distribution. Tropicos does not categorize distributions as native or non-native.

Opuntia monacantha Haw.:
Brazil (South America)
Madagascar (Africa & Madagascar)
China (Asia)

Note: This information is based on publications available through Tropicos and may not represent the entire distribution. Tropicos does not categorize distributions as native or non-native.

Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Taiwan, Yunnan [native to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay; widely introduced and naturalized in tropical and subtropical regions].

Recorded from South-eastern and Southern Brazil: central-eastern Minas Gerais, southern Espírito Santo (and presumably northern Rio de Janeiro); Paraguay, Uruguay and northern and eastern Argentina; frequently naturalized or planted elsewhere (including North-eastern Brazil).

United States

Origin: Exotic

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Unknown/Undetermined

Confidence: Confident

Global Range: Native of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina; intro- duced in disturbed areas in the caribbean Tropical Forest and Asian-Pacific Tropical Forest. Hawaii in Honolulu at Punch Bowl and near Kamehameha School; Florida in Polk Co.

E. S. America, planted and naturalised widely in Himalaya and India.

Shrubs or treelike, 1.3-4 m tall. Trunk (when present) terete. Larger, terminal joints glossy green, obovate, narrowly so, obovate-oblong, oblong, or oblanceolate, 10-30 × 7.5-12.5 cm, thin, narrowed basally, margin undulate toward apex. Areoles 3-5 mm in diam. Spines sparse on joint 1 or 2(or 3) per areole, but on main trunk to 12 per areole, erect or spreading, grayish, dark brown tipped, acicular, 1-7.5 cm; glochids brownish, 2-3 mm. Leaves conic, 2-4 mm, deciduous. Flowers 5-7.5 cm in diam. Sepaloids with red midrib and yellow margin, obovate or broadly ovate, 0.8-2.5 × 0.8-1.5 cm, apex rounded or emarginate. Petaloids spreading, yellow to orange, or obovate to oblong-obovate, 2.3-4 × 1.2-3 cm, margin subentire, apex rounded, truncate, or muricate. Filaments greenish, ca. 12 mm; anthers pale yellow, ca. 1 mm. Style greenish, 1.2-2 cm; stigmas 6-10, cream, 4.5-6 mm. Fruit reddish purple, obovoid, 5-7.5 × 4-5 cm, umbilicus slightly depressed. Seeds light tan, irregularly elliptic, ca. 4 × 3 mm. Fl. Apr-Aug.

700-1800 m

Cactus monacanthos Willdenow, Enum. Pl. Suppl. 33. 1814; C. indicus Roxburgh.

Seashores, slopes; sea level to 2000 m.

Habitat and Ecology

Systems

• Terrestrial

Note: For many non-migratory species, occurrences are roughly equivalent to populations.

Estimated Number of Occurrences: 1 - 5

Comments: Three EO's in the United States (Benson 1982).

United States

Rounded National Status Rank: NNA - Not Applicable

Rounded Global Status Rank: GNR - Not Yet Ranked

Comments: Most cacti subject to horticultural collecting.

This species was first recorded in China in 1625.

When describing Opuntia monacantha, Haworth based the name on a plant from Barbados, where only O. dillenii is currently recorded as native. Haworth’s name has now been neotypified to maintain its use in the sense employed here and is the earliest name consistently applied to this widely introduced plant, which is native to SE South America. Haworth cited Cactus monacanthos Willdenow 1814 in synonymy with a "?," but this indication of doubt rules out Willdenow’s untypifiable name as a potential basionym for that of Haworth. An earlier name formerly and widely applied to O. monacantha is O. vulgaris Miller. This confused name has now been typified to become a synonym of O. ficus-indica (Linnaeus) Miller (see Leuenberger, Taxon 42: 419-429).