This flower is only about a half inch tall and a little less than that wide. It’s on one of the cacti we recently brought from California. Since the cactus has been in Arizona, it grew a new lobe and then this flower appeared on the new lobe. Click on the image to enlarge.
Wow, you got me on this one. The ephemeral leaves and the shape suggest Opuntia, but I don’t know one of those with a flower so small. Real nice color, though.
It’s definitely opuntia. The leaves are only about three inches long but have that classic paddle shape. Damsel took a photo of the tag that identified the species but it’s lost in the vast photo archives.
If the “leaf” on a Prickly Pear is three inches long, it’s actually a stem or branch. The leaves to which I refer are those little tiny green nubs pictured on the stem. Those are the true leaves, but they don’t last long. They wither quickly after a new branch matures.