Flowers. Photo: Robert Sivinski, New Mexico, USA

Flower and unripe fruit. Photo: Robert Sivinski, New Mexico, USA

Fruit on stems. Photo: Rochelle Kelly, New Mexico, USA

Flowering plants. Photo: Robert Sivinski, New Mexico, USA

Plants at old homestead. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, SA

Common Name

Devil's Rope Pear, Rope Pear, Devil’s Rope, Chain-link Cactus

Family

Cactaceae

Notes

Introduced tree-like plant, sometimes sprawling, to 3.5m tall, with a cylindrical woody trunk. Stems succulent. Spines on the stems and the bases of the flowers, but not on the fruit. Leaves 0.8-2.4cm long, cylindrical or cone-shaped, hard to see and easily shed. Flowers pink to red to purple, with many ‘petals’, borne singly towards the ends of the stem segments. Mature fruit yellow. A weed of national significance. Noxious weed all NSW.

Description and photo in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales page 503

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Cylindropuntia~imbricata

Weeds of Australia Biosecurity Queensland Edition description:  http://keyserver.lucidcentral.org/weeds/data/03030800-0b07-490a-8d04-0605030c0f01/media/Html/Cylindropuntia_imbricata.htm