Opuntia ficus-indica(L.) Mill.

Indian fig opuntia

WFO wfo-0000385761 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Jess Mullins
fig. a Jess Mullins, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205965958
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. b Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 206628321
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. c Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204870141
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. d Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199976434
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. e Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204927335
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. f Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204196985
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. g Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199963110
Opuntia ficus-indica, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. h Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199120744

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.

Flowering n = 1,778 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,778 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 54 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 compressus Salisb.
  • Cactus decumanus Willd.
  • Cactus elongatus Willd.
  • Cactus ficus Thunb.
  • Cactus ficus-indica L.
  • Cactus lanceolatus Haw.
  • Cactus maximus Colla
  • Cactus opuntia L.
  • Cactus opuntia var. ficus-indica (L.) DC.
  • Cactus opuntia var. latifolius Risso
  • Opuntia alfagayucca Karw. ex Salm-Dyck
  • Opuntia amyclaea Ten.
  • Opuntia apurimacensis (F.Ritter) R.Crook & Mottram
  • Opuntia arkansana Engelm. ex Hirscht
  • Opuntia caespitosa Raf.
  • Opuntia compressa J.F.Macbr.
  • Opuntia cordobensis Speg.
  • Opuntia crassa Haw.
  • Opuntia crassa var. major Pfeiff.
  • Opuntia decumana (Willd.) Haw.
  • Opuntia elongata (Willd.) Haw.
  • Opuntia elongata var. laevior Salm-Dyck
  • Opuntia ficus-barbarica A.Berger
  • Opuntia ficus-indica f. amyclaea (Ten.) Schelle

and 30 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.