Golden Prickly Pear

Opuntia aurea forms hybrids with O. polyacantha var. erinacea and O. phaeacantha, and forms hybrid swarms with O. pinkavae (B. D. Parfitt 1991).

Shrubs, forming low clumps or with trailing branches, 10-30 cm. Stem segments not disarticulating, green to blue-green, flattened, elliptic to obovate, 6-15 × 5-12 cm, low tuberculate, papillate; areoles 7-11 per diagonal row across midstem segment, subcircular to elliptic, 3-5 × 2-4 mm; wool tan. Spines absent or only l spine in 1-few distal areoles, deflexed, yellow to gray, straight, terete, to 10 mm. Glochids in dense crescent at adaxial margin of areole and dense subapical tuft, yellow, to 6 mm. Flowers: inner tepals yellow throughout (magenta in introgressed plants), 25-30 mm; filaments white to yellow; anthers yellow; style white; stigma lobes green. Fruits tan to gray, 25-30 × 15-20 mm, dry, spineless; areoles 12-18. Seeds tan, subspheric to irregularly shaped, flattened, very large, 9-12 mm diam.; girdle thick, protruding 2.5-3.5 mm. 2n = 66.

Ariz., Utah.

Flowering late spring (May-Jun).

Pinyon-juniper woodlands, red sands; 1500-1800m.

Opuntia basilaris Engelmann & J. M. Bigelow var. aurea (E. M. Baxter) W. T. Marshall; O. erinacea Engelmann var. aurea (E. M. Baxter) S. L. Welsh

Opuntia aurea is a cactus that grows in Southern Utah and perhaps Northern Arizona.

It is prostrate and forms irregularly sprawling plants to about three feet across. Occasionally a single pad may grow upright. The cactus can be spineless, have a few spines or have multiple spines. Spines may be in the distal areoles only.