Opuntia cochenillifera
(L.) Mill. (1768)
Etymology
| 🌵 Author(s) | Philip Miller |
| 🌵 Basionym | Cactus cochenillifer (1753) |
| 🌵 Basionym author(s) | Carl Linnaeus |
| 🌵 Type of | Nopalea |
Spanish cochenilla or French cochenille ‘cochineal (Dactylopius coccus)’ + Latin –fer ‘bearing’. Named for the cochineal insect, from which the natural dye carmine is derived and which is cultivated on this species. The epithet is sometimes latinized to coccinellifera.
The species was cultivated in the Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia) in the 19th century, where it was known as tjeulie-badak-tjeribon [ceuli badak ceribon] ‘Cirebon rhinoceros ear’ in Sundanese, as nopal [cf. Nopal] in Javanese (Filet, Plantkundig woordenboek voor Nederlandsch-Indië. 1876) and as rinocerosoor ‘rhinoceros ear’ in Dutch (Miquel, Fl. Ned. Ind. 1(2): 651. 1858).
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2022 Jul 19). Opuntia cochenillifera. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/opuntia-cochenillifera