Cylindropuntia imbricata(Haw.) F.M.Knuth

tree cholla

WFO wfo-0000632390 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. a Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 205711681
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. b Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199913455
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. c Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200608350
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Mauricio Calderón
fig. d Mauricio Calderón, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200295283
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Lyrae
fig. e Lyrae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190972743
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by Alan Rockefeller
fig. f Alan Rockefeller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186826053
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. g CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187457400
Cylindropuntia imbricata, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. h CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187421405

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 747 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 747 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 48 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cactus bleo Torr.
  • Cactus cylindricus J.James
  • Cactus imbricatus (Haw.) Lem.
  • Cactus subquadriflorus Moc. & Sessé ex DC.
  • Cereus imbricatus Pfeiff.
  • Cereus imbricatus Haw.
  • Cylindropuntia arborescens (Engelm.) F.M.Knuth
  • Cylindropuntia cardenche (Griffiths) F.M.Knuth
  • Cylindropuntia cardenche (Griffiths) Pinkava & M.A.Baker
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. arborescens (Engelm.) Bulot
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. argentea (M.S.Anthony) Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. imbricata
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. rosea (DC.) M.A.Baker
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. spinosior (Engelm.) M.A.Baker, Cloud-H. & Majure
  • Cylindropuntia imbricata var. spinotecta (Griffiths) M.A.Baker
  • Cylindropuntia lloydii (Rose) F.M.Knuth
  • Cylindropuntia rosea (DC.) Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia rosea var. atrorosea Backeb.
  • Cylindropuntia spinosior (Engelm.) F.M.Knuth
  • Grusonia imbricata (Haw.) G.D.Rowley
  • Grusonia rosea (DC.) G.D.Rowley
  • Grusonia spinosior (Engelm.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia arborescens Engelm.
  • Opuntia cardenche Griffiths

and 24 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.