Cylindropuntia versicolor – Staghorn Cholla

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (orange flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (yellow flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (red flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (pink flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (yellow-green flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (bronze flower)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (fruit)Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla (fruit and stem)

Cylindropuntia versicolor - Staghorn Cholla

Plant Name

Scientific Name: Cylindropuntia versicolor

Synonym: Opuntia versicolor

Common Name: Staghorn Cholla

Plant Characteristics

Duration: Perennial

Growth Habit: Shrub, Cactus

Arizona Native Status: Native

Habitat: Desert

Flower Color: Red, Orange, Yellow, Yellow-green, Pink, Bronze

Flowering Season: Spring

Height: To 7 feet (2.1 m) tall or more

Description: The large, 2 1/4 inch (5.7 cm) wide flowers come in an amazingly wide variety of colors and have yellow-green anther filaments and white to bronze styles. The rounded, mostly spineless, yellow-green to reddish purple fruits stay attached to the stems all winter and often proliferate (new fruits grow out of the old fruits). The immature fruits are green and tuberculate, but the mature fruits swell to become smooth and plump, and they remain on the plant while it is flowering. Although they are not poisonous, the fruits are tough and inedible. The stems are spiny, green to reddish purple in color, and shaped like deer antlers (stag horns). This cactus readily hybridizes with other Chollas, making it quite variable in appearance.

The similar Buck-horn Cholla (Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa) has bumpy, very spiny, brown fruits that drop off before the plant flowers, while the also similar Walkingstick Cactus (Cylindropuntia spinosior) has very bumpy, spineless, yellow fruits that remain on the plant while flowering.

Special Characteristics

Legal StatusProtected Native Plant (Salvage Restricted)

Classification

Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Caryophyllidae
Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Cactaceae – Cactus family
Genus: Cylindropuntia (Engelm.) Kreuzinger
Species: Cylindropuntia versicolor (Engelm. ex J.M. Coult.) F.M. Knuth – staghorn cholla

More About This Plant

Arizona County Distribution Map