Opuntia polyacantha var. polyacantha Haw.

Sokoloff, Paul C., Freebury, Colin E., Hamilton, Paul B. & Saarela, Jeffery M., 2016, The " Martian " flora: new collections of vascular plants, lichens, fungi, algae, and cyanobacteria from the Mars Desert Research Station, Utah, Biodiversity Data Journal 4, pp. 8176-8176 : 8176

Opuntia polyacantha var. polyacantha Haw.

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordNumber: 293; recordedBy: Sokoloff, Paul C.; preparations: Silica gel collection; Taxon: scientificName: Opuntiapolyacantha Haw. var. polyacantha; kingdom: Plantae; phylum: Angiosperms; class: Eudicots; order: Caryophyllales; family: Cactaceae; genus: Opuntia; specificEpithet: polyacantha; infraspecificEpithet: polyacantha; taxonRank: Variety; scientificNameAuthorship: Haw.; Location: continent: North America; country: United States of America; countryCode: USA; stateProvince: Utah; county: Wayne County; municipality: Hanksville; locality: Mars Desert Research Station ; verbatimLocality: Approx. 200 m past fork on Cow Dung Road, down eastern fork, 1.9 km northeast of Mars Desert Research Station; verbatimElevation: 1381 m; verbatimLatitude: 38°25'3.2"N; verbatimLongitude: 110°46'29.7"W; coordinateUncertaintyInMeters: 50; Identification: identifiedBy: Sokoloff, Paul C.; dateIdentified: 2015; Event: verbatimEventDate: November 23, 2014; habitat: Artemisia-dominated desert scrub; Record Level: institutionID: CMN; collectionID: CAN 607489; collectionCode: CAN, UTC; basisOfRecord: Preserved Specimen

Notes

Opuntia polyacantha was the more common of the two Opuntia species recorded near the station, and was frequently encountered in the Ephedra - Atriplex - Achnatherum shrubland deserts north of MDRS (Fig. 33). Like O. basilaris , O. polyacantha is morphologically variable and hybridizes readily. This has resulted in a proliferation of variety names in O. polyacantha , including four in Welsh et al. (1993). We follow Pinkava (2003) here, who delineates O. polyacantha into five varieties across its range. This species was previously recorded for the nearby San Rafael Swell as Opuntia polyacantha (without infraspecific rank) ( Harris 1983).

Supplemental File: CAN 607489 (Suppl. material 44).