Opuntia echios Opuntia echios Opuntia echios is a species of plant in the Cactaceae family. It is endemic to the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) and is commonly known as the Galápagos prickly pear, but there are five other species of prickly pears that also are endemic to the archipelago ("O. galapageia", "O. helleri", "O. insularis", "O. megasperma" and "O. saxicola"). There are five varieties of "Opuntia echios", each with a different appearance and distribution: "Opuntia echios" var. "echios" on the islands of Santa Cruz, Baltra, Daphne Major and South Plaza, "Opuntia echios" var. "barringtonensis" on Santa Fe, "Opuntia echios" var. "gigantea" near Academy
Plant functional type Plant functional type Plant functional types (PFTs) is a system used by climatologists to classify plants according to their physical, phylogenetic and phenological characteristics as part of an overall effort to develop a vegetation model for use in land use studies and climate models. PFTs provide a finer level of modeling than biomes, which represent gross areas such as desert, savannah, deciduous forest. In creating a PFT model, areas as small as 1 km are modeled by defining the predominant plant type for that area, interpreted from satellite data or other means. For each plant functional type, a number of