73-OPUNTIA ELATIOR mill. Gard.
Local name: Phadya Nivdung
Family: Cactaceae
Location: Botanical Garden.
Characters: Bushy shrubs, stem terete,
branches of flat, green, spinous joints.
Joints oblong areoles, densely glochidiate, greyish brown. Flowers erecto patent, solitary from the areoles along margins of joints. Sepals and petals pale yellow, keeled 3.4 x 1.2 cm, petals longer than the sepals. Fading pink, stamens included stigma shortly 3-lobed. Fruits ovoid globose red with glaucos bloom, juicy seeds many ovoid, brown.
Naturalised on waste land around fields and in open grasslands, throughout the district.
General use: Latex is used for fish killing. Fruits eaten and the plants fed to cattle during scarcity after burning of the spines in the stems.
Medicinal use: Warm poultice of longitudinally cut stem pieces mixed with turmeric powder is applied on swelling, muscular pains, burns and wounds.
Veterinary use: Leaves used in bodyache.