WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

When dense, 6-inch tall mats of this spiny groundcover aren’t covered with flamboyant yellow flowers, you can get a nasty reminder to watch your step in the desert. Short rigid and long flattened white spines densely cover the thumb-sized stems. This species was previously named Opuntia clavata.

FLOWERS: May–June. Flowers have numerous bright yellow petal-like tepals, each to 1-inch (25 mm) long, with yellow-green to white filaments and white style and stigma lobes. Fruit yellow, barrel-shaped, 1–1 1/2-inches (30–45 mm) long, densely covered with bristly glochid-like spines.

SPINES: Club-shaped stems, 1–2-inches (2.5–5 cm) long, 5/8–1 1/4-inches (1.5–3 cm) wide; areoles with tiny barbed spines (glochids) and 7–15 white spines:; 1–3 major flattened upper spines and 3–5 major flattened bottom spines, dagger-like, tapering, 1/2–1 3/8-inches (12–35 mm) long. 

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly soils; grasslands, desert scrub, pinyon-juniper.

ELEVATION: 4,000–6,000 feet.

RANGE: Endemic to NM.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Two other club chollas barely reach into southern NM: G. grahamii, in Dona Ana, Otero counties and G. emoryi, in the Boothill, have major spines only slightly flattened.

NM COUNTIES: From Four Corners through central NM to TX border region in low- to mid-elevation arid habitats: Bernalillo, Cibola, Dona Ana, Guadalupe, Lincoln, McKinley, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, Valencia.