Opuntia fragilis
(Nutt.) Haw. (1819)
Etymology
🌵 Author(s) | Adrian Hardy Haworth | 🌵 Published in | Suppl. Pl. Succ.: 82 (1819) |
🌵 Basionym | Cactus fragilis (1818) |
🌵 Basionym author(s) | Thomas Nuttall | 🌵 Basionym published in | Gen. N. Amer. Pl. [Nuttall]. 1: 296 (1818) |
Latin frăgÄlis ‘easily broken, brittle, fragile’. For the easily detached stem segments. Nuttall: “[R]emarkable for its brittleness, the articulations though not very tumid coming off and attaching themselves to every thing which they happen to touch, so much so as to lead the hunters to say that it grows without roots.” Compare Opuntia frustulenta.
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2022 Feb 05). Opuntia fragilis. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/opuntia-fragilis