Opuntia phaeacanthaEngelm.

Brown-spined Pricklypear

WFO wfo-0001287002 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. a Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-29 / obs. 192199032
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Noland Martin
fig. b Noland Martin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173927858
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Kristen Francis
fig. c Kristen Francis, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204794233
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Mike Ostrowski
fig. d Mike Ostrowski, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 174873564
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Jacob Malcom
fig. e Jacob Malcom, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192354617
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Trevor Harding
fig. f Trevor Harding, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173305212
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Ryan Mulqueen
fig. g Ryan Mulqueen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205520778
Opuntia phaeacantha, photographed by Dan Horowitz
fig. h Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 174195522

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 = 556 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 556 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 42 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.

  • Opuntia angustata Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow
  • Opuntia blakeana Rose
  • Opuntia canada Griffiths
  • Opuntia chihuahuensis Rose
  • Opuntia comanchica Urlandt
  • Opuntia confusa Griffiths
  • Opuntia cyclodes (Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow) Rose
  • Opuntia dulcis Engelm.
  • Opuntia engelmannii var. cyclodes Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow
  • Opuntia engelmannii var. dulcis (Engelm.) J.M.Coult. ex K.Schum.
  • Opuntia engelmannii var. wootonii (Griffiths) Fosberg
  • Opuntia eocarpa Griffiths
  • Opuntia gilvescens Griffiths
  • Opuntia gregoriana Griffiths
  • Opuntia hanburyana F.A.C.Weber ex A.Berger
  • Opuntia laevis var. canada (Griffiths) Peebles
  • Opuntia lindheimeri var. cyclodes (Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow) J.M.Coult.
  • Opuntia lindheimeri var. dulcis (Engelm.) J.M.Coult.
  • Opuntia mesacantha var. sphaerocarpa J.M.Coult. ex Wooton & Standl.
  • Opuntia mohavensis Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow
  • Opuntia mojavensis Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow
  • Opuntia phaeacantha f. brunnea (Engelm.) Schelle
  • Opuntia phaeacantha subsp. camanchica (Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow) Borg
  • Opuntia phaeacantha subsp. mojavensis (Engelm. & J.M.Bigelow) Guiggi

and 18 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.