Cylindropuntia ramosissima(Engelm.) F.M.Knuth

Branched Pencil Cholla

WFO wfo-0000632419 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f

Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by Kyle Nessen
fig. a Kyle Nessen, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-22 / obs. 190784464
Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. b Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194462597
Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by paulexcoff
fig. c paulexcoff, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 189368901
Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. d Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194468908
Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. e Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192029674
Cylindropuntia ramosissima, photographed by ant, like the bug
fig. f ant, like the bug, CC0 1.0 / obs. 188405846

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 = 290 observations

Peak flowering in Oct, from 290 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 5 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.

  • Cylindropuntia ramosissima var. cristata (K.Schum.) P.V.Heath
  • Grusonia ramosissima (Engelm.) G.D.Rowley
  • Opuntia ramosissima Engelm.
  • Opuntia tesselata Engelm.
  • Opuntia tessellata var. cristata K.Schum.

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.