The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Opuntia engelmannii
Also called Engelmann's Prickly Pear, Desert Prickly Pear, Discus Prickly Pear, Cowtongue Cactus, Cowtongue Prickly Pear, Few Spine Marble Fruit Prickly Pear, Tuna
Opuntia engelmannii is a shrubby prickly pear from the southwestern US and northern Mexico, forming dense clumps up to 3.5 m high with green flat pads. It thrives in hot, dry, sunny sites and needs very little water.
Opuntia engelmannii is a prickly pear common across the south-central and Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It goes by a variety of common names, including desert prickly pear, discus prickly pear, Engelmann's prickly pear in the US, and nopal, abrojo, joconostle, and vela de coyote in Mexico.
The nomenclatural history of this species is somewhat complicated due to the varieties, as well as its habit of hybridizing with Opuntia phaeacantha. It differs from O. phaeacantha by being green year round instead of turning reddish purple during winter or dry seasons, as well as having yellow flowers with red centers.
O. engelmannii is native to sub-tropical regions of North America. It prefers hot, dry conditions, but is more frost-tolerant than other species of Opuntia. O. engelmannii range extends from California to Louisiana in the United States, and from Sonora (state) and Chihuahua (state), to the Tamaulipan matorral in north and central Tamaulipas.
The fruits were a reliable summer food for Native American tribes. The Tohono O'odham of the Sonoran Desert in particular classified the fruits by color, time of ripening, and how well they kept in storage.
Chenille pricklypear · Cochineal nopal cactus · Erect pricklypear · Barbary fig · Opuntia huajuapensis · Devil's-tongue · Opuntia lagunae · Coastal pricklypear · Purple pricklypear · Twistspine pricklypear · Opuntia matudae · Angel's-wings
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Opuntia engelmannii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
