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Opuntia stricta
Also called Erect Prickly Pear, Prickle, Sour Prickle, Australian Pest Pear, Pest Pear Of Australia, Sour Prickly Pear, Common Prickly Pear
Opuntia stricta is a species of large cactus that is native to subtropical and tropical coastal areas of the Americas, especially around the Caribbean and the lower East Coast of the United States. Common names include erect prickly pear and nopal estricto (Spanish). The first description as Cactus strictus was published in 1803 by Adrian Hardy Haworth. In 1812 he moved the species to the genus Opuntia.
Opuntia stricta occurs naturally in coastal beach scrub and sandy coastal environments in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana along the Gulf Coast in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama in the United States, as well as Bermuda, the Caribbean, eastern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America (Venezuela and Ecuador). It is a major component in the understory of Bahamian dry forests in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Big Pine Key Prickly Pear · Chenille pricklypear · Texas Plains Pricklypear · Devil's-tongue · Opuntia anacantha · Opuntia anahuacensis · Sand Prickly Pear · Border pricklypear · Opuntia auberi · Tiger-pear · Golden pricklypear · Devil's-tongue
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Opuntia stricta by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
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.
