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Eastern prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa (Raf.) Raf.)

Also known as devil's-tongue, Indian fig.

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Notes
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Photos

flat-leaved cacti with showy yellow flowers, growing in rocky sand

Photo © Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0.

↑Range - Expand

Legend	Color
Native
Native or Not Present
Introduced or Not Present

This tentative map is based on our own research. It may have limited data on Canada and/or Mexico, and there is some subjectivity in our assignment of plants as introduced vs. expanded. Read more in this blog post.

Although this plant occurs somewhere in each of these regions, it may only occur in a small part of some or all of them.

↑Notes

We recommend the use of the common name "eastern prickly pear" because it is unambiguous, and is more descriptive of this plant's range and relationship to other Opuntia sp., which are also called "prickly pears". The common name "devil's-tongue" is ambiguous because it can also refer to the closely-related Opuntia ammophila, to Konjac (Amorphophallus konjac), which is cultivated as a root vegetable in East Asia and does not occur in the wild in North America, or to the Red Savina pepper, a cultivar of Capsicum chinense, a species which also does not occur in the wild in North America. We also recommend against the use of the term "Indian fig", as it more commonly refers to the related species barbary fig (Opuntia ficus-indica) which has been introduced in the western US, but can also refer to the Indian banyan (Ficus benghalensis) which has been introduced in South Florida.