Opuntia diploursina Opuntia diploursina Opuntia diploursina is a species in the Cactaceae family, that grows near and in Lake Mead National Recreation Area and northward across Nevada's Mormon Mesa, into Utah. This species is a close relative and probable ancestor of "Opuntia erinacea", but "...differs in minor spines more closely appressed to pad surface, spines smaller in diameter and more flexible, inter-areolar distance less, upright growth habit, larger fruit with longer, more flexible spines, larger seeds, and diploid chromosome number (2n=22)". "Opuntia diploursina" is also related to another diploid species, "O. trichophora", but differs from that species, as stated in the original
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