Dollar Joint Prickly Pear

Opuntia chlorotica hybridizes with O. santa-rita in southeastern Arizona and with the hexaploid O. phaeacantha forming the tetraploid O. ×curvispina in areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada.

Trees or shrubs, erect, 2-2.5 m, with spiny, well-defined trunk to 30 cm diam. Stem segments not disarticulating, blue-green, flattened, obovate to circular, 13-21 × 11.5-19 cm, nearly smooth, glabrous; areoles 7-10 per diagonal row across midstem segment, subcircular to elliptic, with basal ridge, 3-6 × 2.5-4 mm; wool tan, aging grayish white. Spines absent or usually in distal areoles to evenly distributed over entire stem segment, yellow, aging red-brown to blackish, straight or weakly curved, ± acicular, deflexed, or some erect in marginal areoles; larger spines 0-7 per areole, terete or basally flattened, 25-45 mm, usually accompanied by few straight to wavy bristle-spines. Glochids crowded in narrow crescent along adaxial margins, longer toward base of areole margins, subapical tuft absent or poorly developed, yellow, aging reddish brown, to 14 mm. Flowers: inner tepals yellow (sometimes with reddish blush near base), abaxially reddish streaked along midveins, broadly spatulate-apiculate, 18-30 mm; filaments white to yellow; anthers; style and stigma lobes white, yellowish, or pale green. Fruits red, barrel-shaped, 30-60 × 18-40 mm, fleshy (often mummifying), glabrous, spineless; umbilicus 6-9 mm deep; areoles 40-68. Seeds yellowish, 3.5-4 × 3-3.5 mm, 1.5-1.8 mm thick, reniform to subcircular, flattened, often warped; girdle protruding 0.1-0.5 mm. 2n = 22.

Ariz., Calif., Nev., N.Mex., Utah; Mexico (Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora).

Flowering spring-summer (Apr-Jul).

Desert grasslands, woodlands, chaparral, desert flats, rocky ledges, hills, canyons; 600-2400m.

Opuntia chlorotica is a species of plant in the family Cactaceae. It is a species of prickly pear native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Its common names include pancake prickly pear, flapjack prickly pear and dollarjoint prickly pear.

This cactus is bluish-green and manifests a bushy to erect form that may attain a height of two meters or more. Some analysis of the prehistoric range of O. chlorotica has been conducted by studies in the Waterman Mountains of Arizona; these pollen core analyses indicate that this cactus species was present in northern Arizona in late Wisconsinan glaciation period.