Opuntia littoralis(Engelm.) Cockerell

Coastal Pricklypear

WFO wfo-0001287225 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Jim Riley
fig. a Jim Riley, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-22 / obs. 195731089
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. b Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194360278
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. c James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 191397458
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Casey H. Richart
fig. d Casey H. Richart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194515836
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Jim Riley
fig. e Jim Riley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195739003
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Casey H. Richart
fig. f Casey H. Richart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194520838
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by william_hoyer
fig. g william_hoyer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178798870
Opuntia littoralis, photographed by Arvel Hernandez
fig. h Arvel Hernandez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186813576

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 854 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 854 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 10 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Opuntia engelmannii f. littoralis (Engelm.) Schelle
  • Opuntia engelmannii var. littoralis Engelm.
  • Opuntia lindheimeri var. littoralis (Engelm.) J.M.Coult.
  • Opuntia littoralis var. littoralis
  • Opuntia littoralis var. piercei (Fosberg) L.D.Benson & Walk.
  • Opuntia occidentalis var. littoralis (Engelm.) Parish
  • Opuntia occidentalis var. littoralis (Engelm.) Parish ex Jeps.
  • Opuntia occidentalis var. piercei (Fosberg) Munz
  • Opuntia phaeacantha var. piercei Fosberg
  • Opuntia semispinosa Griffiths

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.