Plant Species of the Bright Angel Trail:
prickly-pear, Opuntia sp.
prickly-pear, Opuntia sp.
See Plant Guide to Bright Angel Trail for an introduction to this page, especially the Introduction To These Species Pages.
This page is just a shell to hold my photographs and reference information for now, so that readers can see the photographs and this taxon. The identification status, voucher info, and discussion of the species will be added in the future.
Characteristics
Identification status: .
From a SEINet search on 29 September 2007, there are vouchers of this species from the Coconino County portion of the Grand Canyon. The nearest are at: ; and . Note that there may be additional vouchers at other herbaria not available through SEINet.
First occurrence on Bright Angel Trail: mile 2.30, elevation 5267 feet (1605 m). The first off-trail occurrence is at mile 0.21, elevation 6732 feet (2052 m).
Number of plants along Trail: at least plants were found in at least different locations in September 2007.
Pictures
There are pictures of five different plants below, which may or may not all be the same species. There were too many prickly pears in the Grand Canyon flora for me to be able to figure out the species quickly; perhaps a reader familiar with the prickly pears can find something distinctive in these plants.
From 5 September 2007, off-trail at mile 0.21:
From 5 September 2007, off-trail at mile ~0.79:
From 6 September 2007, two pictures each of two different plants off-trail at mile ~1.75:
From 6 September 2007, on-trail at mile 2.30:
References
See Resources for Grand Canyon Flora for further information on most of these references. Entries in the second column are either the name used in that source or a page reference. The name is linked to online pages when available. If a given reference does not contain this taxon, the entry is either left blank or contains a hyphen.