Purple prickly pear

Most species of prickly pear cactus have green pads, but some in Big Bend are purple. Botanists used to lump various purple prickly pears into Opuntia macrocentra, but now they’ve split some of them off into Opuntia azurea, which comes in four varieties; I’m guessing that the cactus shown here on November 22nd is Opuntia azurea var. diplopurpurea, but don’t hold me to it (get it?).

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman