What are the flowers on cactus called?

People typically do not realize that these cactus leaves are true leaves but they are indeed. They are usually called “scales” or “bracts” but that does not matter: they are leaves. The problem is that the ovary is so deeply inferior that these leaves appear to be part of a flower rather than part of a vegetative stem. read more

A cactus (plural: cacti, cactuses, or cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. read more

Cactus flower anatomy has received little attention. Flowers are large and showy in many genera, with dozens of petals and stamens rather than just the 5 or 10 of each as we might expect of a dicot. All cacti, other than a few species in Pereskia, have an inferior ovary, and that is the point of this portion of the website. read more