Opuntia microdasys(Lehm.) Pfeiff.

Bunny Ears Cactus

WFO wfo-0000385628 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Opuntia microdasys, photographed by Marc Whitaker
fig. a Marc Whitaker, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-07 / obs. 195722691
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by Christiaan Viljoen
fig. b Christiaan Viljoen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199587695
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by Sandino Guerrero
fig. c Sandino Guerrero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178666847
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. d Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191769805
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz
fig. e José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174165031
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz
fig. f José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174165810
Opuntia microdasys, photographed by Juan José de Haro
fig. g Juan José de Haro, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 157127131

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 = 143 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 143 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 12 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 microdasys Lehm.
  • Opuntia herrfeldtii Kupper
  • Opuntia lubrica Griffiths
  • Opuntia macrocalyx Griffiths
  • Opuntia microdasys f. minor (Salm-Dyck) Schelle
  • Opuntia microdasys subsp. microdasys
  • Opuntia microdasys subvar. albiflora Backeb.
  • Opuntia microdasys var. albispina Fobe & Backeb.
  • Opuntia microdasys var. laevior Salm-Dyck
  • Opuntia microdasys var. minor Salm-Dyck
  • Opuntia microdasys var. pallida Borg
  • Opuntia pulvinata DC.

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.