Opuntia basilaris var. basilaris Engelm. & J.M. Bigelow

Sokoloff, Paul C., Freebury, Colin E., Hamilton, Paul B. & Saarela, Jeffery M., 2016, The " Martian " flora: new collections of vascular plants, lichens, fungi, algae, and cyanobacteria from the Mars Desert Research Station, Utah, Biodiversity Data Journal 4, pp. 8176-8176 : 8176

Opuntia basilaris var. basilaris Engelm. & J.M. Bigelow

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordNumber: 272; recordedBy: Sokoloff, Paul C.; preparations: Silica gel collection; Taxon: scientificName: OpuntiabasilarisEngelm. & J.M. Bigelowvar.basilaris; kingdom: Plantae; phylum: Angiosperms; class: Eudicots; order: Caryophyllales; family: Cactaceae; genus: Opuntia; specificEpithet: basilaris; infraspecificEpithet: basilaris; taxonRank: Variety; scientificNameAuthorship: Engelm. & J.M. Bigelow; Location: continent: North America; country: United States of America; countryCode: USA; stateProvince: Utah; county: Wayne County; municipality: Hanksville; locality: Mars Desert Research Station ; verbatimLocality: Seasonally wet stream crossing on Cow Dung Road, 1.6 km northeast of Mars Desert Research Station; verbatimElevation: 1371 m; verbatimLatitude: 38°25'55.39"N; verbatimLongitude: 110°47'30.2"W; coordinateUncertaintyInMeters: 50; Identification: identifiedBy: Sokoloff, Paul C.; dateIdentified: 2015; Event: verbatimEventDate: November 22, 2014; habitat: Desert slopes; Record Level: institutionID: CMN; collectionID: CAN 607488; collectionCode: CAN, UTC; basisOfRecord: Preserved Specimen

Notes

This species was common along the banks of a seasonally wet stream crossing due northeast of MDRS (Fig. 32). This species was previously recorded from the nearby San Rafael Swell as Opuntia basilaris (without infraspecific rank) ( Harris 1983). Morphological variability and hybridization have hindered infraspecific delineation in this species, and many named varieties appear in the literature, including four in Welsh et al. (1993), and a different set of four in Pinkava (2003); here we follow the latter treatment.

Supplemental File: CAN 607488 (Suppl. material 43).