Cylindropuntia imbricata (tree cholla)

Found in central and northern Mexico and southwestern USA in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado at elevations of 1,200–2,300 m. It has also become naturalised and invasive in parts of South Africa.

In cultivation, Cylindropuntia imbricata is normally a shrub 1–2 m high, but in the wild may occasionally grow to a small tree up to 5 m. It has thick, cylindrical, knobbly, woolly, spiny stems bearing spreading or ascending spiny branches. Spines have barbed sheaths as well as being barbed themselves. Flowers are dark pinkish-purple or magenta, measure 6–9 cm across and occur from late spring to summer. The yellow fleshy fruits are spineless and barrel-shaped with a flattened end. They measure approximately 3 cm across and persist during winter.

Hand-coloured lithograph of Cylindropuntia imbricata (as Opuntia imbricata) by Matilda Smith (1909), taken from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Image: RBG Kew)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

Published for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
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Cylindropuntia imbricata is grown as an ornamental. The young stems and fruits were dried and eaten by native Americans during the winter months whenever food was scarce.

Old stems become hollow in the centre, leaving an attractive latticed outer casing, and these dead stems are used to make decorative walking sticks and floral arrangements.

The Millennium Seed Bank partnership aims to save plant life worldwide, focusing on plants under threat and those of most use in the future. Seeds are dried, packaged and stored at a sub-zero temperature in Kew's seed bank vault at Wakehurst.

Description of seeds: Average 1000 seed weight is 7.531 g.
Number of seed collections stored in the Millennium Seed Bank: Two.

Propagation of tree cholla is by seeds or rooting of stems.

Cylindropuntia imbricata is grown in the Princess of Wales Conservatory.

Pressed and dried specimens of Cylindropuntia imbricata are held in Kew’s Herbarium, where they are available to researchers from around the world, by appointment. The details of some of these can be seen on-line (under the synonym Opuntia imbricata) in the Herbarium Catalogue.

Kew’s Economic Botany Collection includes a rough walking stick made from tree cholla that was brought back to Kew from Colorado in 1882.

Search Kew's databases for more information on this species

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)

Flora of North America – Cylindropuntia imbricata

USDA plants database – Cylindropuntia imbricata

Opuntiads of the USA – Cylindropuntia imbricata

SEPASAL (Survey of Economic Plants for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands)