Opuntia maxima

Opuntia maxima Mill. (1768)

🌵 Author(s)

Philip Miller

Etymology

Latin maxĭmus ‘greatest’. For the size of the plants compared to other species known at the time. Based on the pre-Linnaean name Opuntia maxima, folio spinoso, latissimo & longissimo Tourn. (Miller: “Greatest Indian Fig, with the longest and broadest prickly branches”).

The species was cultivated in the Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia) in the 19th century, where it was known as tjeulie-badak [ceuli badak] ‘rhinoceros ear’ or tjeulie-badak-gedeh [ceuli badak gede] ‘big rhinoceros ear’ in Sundanese (Filet, Plantkundig woordenboek voor Nederlandsch-Indië. 1876 [as Opuntia decumana]).