Plains prickly-pear grows in the northern and southern Great Plains, the shrub- and woodlands of the Great Basin, the eastern Sierra Nevada, the borders of the Rocky Mountain forest regions, and the northern Chihuahuan Desert.
It occurs from British Columbia to Manitoba southward through the Dakotas and Missouri to Texas and every state westward [6,30,42]. A distributional map of plains
prickly-pear is available on the PLANTS database.
Distribution of infrataxa is as follows [70]:
Opuntia polyacantha var. arenaria - in sandy soils near the Rio
Grande of southeastern New Mexico, extreme western Texas, and northern Chihuahua Opuntia polyacantha var. erinacea - Arizona Opuntia polyacantha var. hysricina - eastern Utah and western
Colorado Opuntia polyacantha var. nicholii - Arizona and New Mexico Opuntia polyacantha. var. polyacantha - Alberta and Saskatchewan
south to western Texas, New Mexico, and southeastern Utah
In the Great Plains of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the western Dakotas, and eastern Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, common associated grasses include blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii), thickspike wheatgrass (Elymus lanceolatus), green needlegrass (Nassella viridula), needle-and-thread grass (Hesperostipa comata), buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides), prairie junegrass (Koeleria macrantha), Prairie sandreed (Calamovilfa longifolia), Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda), and threadleaf sedge (Carex filifolia). Associated shrubs and forbs may include big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), plains silver sagebrush (A. cana ssp. cana), fringed sagewort (A. frigida), rubber rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus), black greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus), broom snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae), shadscale (Atriplex confertifolia), Gardner's saltbush (A. gardneri), fourwing saltbush (A. canescens), winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata), and little clubmoss (Selaginella densa). Plains prickly-pear occurs infrequently in the understory of open stands of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) [4,19,40,43,44,57,61,79,83].
In the cold desert grasslands and shrublands of the northern interior, including southern British Columbia, eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, plains prickly-pear occurs with blue grama, western wheatgrass, thickspike wheatgrass, green needlegrass, needle-and-thread grass, Sandberg bluegrass, prairie junegrass, threadleaf sedge, bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata), and Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis). Common associated shrubs are big sagebrush, fringed sagewort, gray low sagebrush (A. arbuscula spp. arbuscula), rubber rabbitbrush, green rabbitbrush (C. viscidiflorus), gray horsebrush (Tetradymia canescens), and broom snakeweed. Exotics include cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) [,49,60,66,72,79,83]. A bluebunch wheatgrass/plains prickly pear habitat type has been described for west-central Idaho [25,95,96].
In montane Utah, Nevada, and western Colorado, common plant associates are Colorado pinyon (Pinus edulis), Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma), true mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus), Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), Utah serviceberry (Amelanchier utahensis), big sagebrush, black sagebrush (A. nova), budsage (A. spinescens), spiny hopsage (Grayia spinosa), shadscale, winterfat, Gardner's saltbush, green rabbitbrush, Hood's phlox (Phlox hoodii), and white sage (Kochia americana). Grasses include Indian ricegrass (Achnatherum hymenoides), bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides), saline wildrye (Leymus salinus), and mutton grass (Poa fendleriana) [3,25,31,78].
In the southern Great Plains region of northern Texas, western Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico, common plant associates include blue grama, buffalo grass, western wheatgrass, threeawn (Aristida spp.), lovegrass (Eragrostis spp.), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), tobosa (Pleuraphis mutica), galleta (P. jamesii), and vine mesquite (Panicum obtusum). Dominant woody plants are broom snakeweed, sand sagebrush (A. filifolia), sand shinnery oak (Quercus havardii), cholla (Opuntia imbricata), soapweed yucca (Yucca glauca), and mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) [28,83].
Related categories for
SPECIES: Opuntia polyacantha
| Plains Prickly-Pear
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