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Opuntia semispinosa Griffith
Dave Ferguson writes: O. semispinosa is one of the most common of the coastal species in southern California, and goes inland to around Pomona and Claremont, where there are (or used to be) thousands of acres covered with mostly it or sometimes it and a few other species too. It covered whole hillsides at Puddingstone Reservoir (maybe still does - some). These photos do depict O. littoralis if you follow Benson's book, but if you look up original localities, look at type sheets, and go to type localities, it becomes apparent that these images depict O. semispinosa and not O. littoralis. The real O. littoralis has shades of O. engelmannii and O. orbiculata in it's appearance, is close to O. occidentalis, but areoles are smaller than O. engelmannii and occidentalis, and spines more slender than in all three. O. semispinosa is something unique, but still related. O. semispinosa can be picked out in a collection after hard freezing pretty easily, just by it's response. It is the first California native species to melt after severe cold (at least has been for me). I have no doubts about the I.D. as O. semispinosa in the photos - it is very distinctive (and for once, easy) - but there is the issue of the literature, which ignores most of the names given to these plants in California and relegates everything to "hybrid swarms". The original description of O. semispinossa is on page 89 of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, vol. 43 (1916). Go to volume 43 (1916) and scroll down to page 89. There is no illustration, but the description is pretty detailed (plus, I've seen the type specimens). The description neglects number of spines per areole (they are several) and focuses too much on the spineless areas of the pads that Griffiths found so interesting. Most pads do not have spineless sections, but rather have all (or nearly all) areoles roughly equally spiny. In some plants individual pads have no spines or few spines, but more often part of a pad is spineless or nearly so (usually a half or so of the pad, either one side, or following one edge). He didn't mention that the fruit are almost obconical either, which is fairly distinctive.
By the way, Benson's books have no photos of O. littoralis at all. Those in the color plates of his big 1982 book, labeled as "O. littoralis var. littoralis" are both really O. semispinosa. Same for his figures 452 and 455. His black and white photo showing "O. littoralis var. littoralis" in figure 452 on page 449 actually has O. rugosa in front and O. vaseyi (or maybe that should be O. magenta, which equals "austrocalifornica") in the behind (can't tell one the one way up the hill is, but I know this exact spot, and there are lots of O. occidentalis there). |
Plant labeled Opuntia littoralis var. californica at Huntington Botanic Garden, photo by Winston James |
Plant labeled Opuntia littoralis var. californica at Huntington Botanic Garden, photo by Winston James |
Plant labeled Opuntia littoralis var vaseyi in Wikimedia |
Opuntia littoralis var. littoralis in Wikimedia |
Opuntia littoralis var. littoralis in Wikimedia |
Opuntia littoralis var. littoralis in Wikimedia |
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Plant labeled Opuntia littoralis var vaseyi in Wikimedia |
Plant labeled Opuntia littoralis var vaseyi in Wikimedia |
Contact the Editor-in-Chief: joejshaw@aol.com
All materials copyrighted, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, Joe J. Shaw and David Ferguson, except where othersise noted.
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