Opuntia ammophila buds are distinct with recurved tepals, and the flowers themselves are light-yellow with cream-colored stigmas. The plant is infrequently encountered in mid-Florida. Opuntia ammophila Opuntia ammophila, the devil's-tongue, is a species of prickly pear cactus in Florida. Individuals typically occur singly and do not generally form dense thickets. "O. ammophila" was once considered a variety of "O. humifusa"; however, it is a distinct species. Among their many differences, "O. ammophila" has gray-green cladodes rather than green or grass-green. "Opuntia ammophila" can grow to the height of humans, and large plants with thick trunks were encountered 100 years ago. However, now
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