CACTUS (cacti)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected form: cacti   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does cactus mean? 

• CACTUS (noun)
  The noun CACTUS has 1 sense:

1. any succulent plant of the family Cactaceae native chiefly to arid regions of the New World and usually having spines

  Familiarity information: CACTUS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CACTUS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any succulent plant of the family Cactaceae native chiefly to arid regions of the New World and usually having spines

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("cactus" is a kind of...):

succulent (a plant adapted to arid conditions and characterized by fleshy water-storing tissues that act as water reservoirs)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "cactus"):

night-blooming cereus (any of several cacti of the genus Hylocereus)

crab cactus; Schlumbergera truncatus; Thanksgiving cactus; Zygocactus truncatus (South American jointed cactus with usually red flowers; often cultivated as a houseplant; sometimes classified as genus Schlumbergera)

night-blooming cereus (any of several night-blooming cacti of the genus Selenicereus)

Christmas cactus; Schlumbergera baridgesii; Schlumbergera buckleyi (epiphytic cactus of Brazilian ancestry widely cultivated as a houseplant having jointed flat segments and usually rose-purple flowers that bloom in winter)

mistletoe cactus (a plant of the genus Rhipsalis)

cholla; Opuntia cholla (arborescent cacti having very spiny cylindrical stem segments; southwestern United States and Mexico)

prickly pear; prickly pear cactus (cacti having spiny flat joints and oval fruit that is edible in some species; often used as food for stock)

nopal (any of several cacti of the genus Nopalea resembling prickly pears)

Knowlton's cactus; Pediocactus knowltonii (small clustering cactus of southwestern United States; a threatened species)

garambulla; garambulla cactus; Myrtillocactus geometrizans (arborescent cactus of western Mexico bearing a small oblong edible berrylike fruit)

feather ball; Mammillaria plumosa (a low tuberculate cactus with white feathery spines; northeastern Mexico)

mammillaria (any cactus of the genus Mammillaria)

Lophophora williamsii; mescal; mezcal; peyote (a small spineless globe-shaped cactus; source of mescal buttons)

chichipe; Lemaireocereus chichipe (tall treelike Mexican cactus with edible red fruit)

Easter cactus; Hatiora gaertneri; Schlumbergera gaertneri (spring-blooming South American cactus with oblong joints and coral-red flowers; sometimes placed in genus Schlumbergera)

barrel cactus (a cactus of the genus Ferocactus: unbranched barrel-shaped cactus having deep ribs with numerous spines and usually large funnel-shaped flowers followed by dry fruits)

epiphyllum; orchid cactus (any cactus of the genus Epiphyllum having flattened jointed irregularly branching stems and showy tubular flowers)

rainbow cactus (a stout cylindrical cactus of the southwest United States and adjacent Mexico)

hedgehog cereus (cactus of the genus Echinocereus)

barrel cactus; echinocactus (any cactus of the genus Echinocactus; strongly ribbed and very spiny; southwestern United States to Brazil)

coryphantha (a cactus of the genus Coryphantha)

night-blooming cereus (any of several cacti of the genus Cereus)

Carnegiea gigantea; saguaro; sahuaro (extremely large treelike cactus of desert regions of southwestern United States having a thick columnar sparsely branched trunk bearing white flowers and edible red pulpy fruit)

Ariocarpus fissuratus; living rock (usually unbranched usually spineless cactus covered with warty tubercles and having magenta flowers and white or green fruit; resembles the related mescal; northeastern Mexico and southwestern United States)

Aporocactus flagelliformis; rat's-tail cactus; rattail cactus (commonly cultivated tropical American cactus having slender creeping stems and very large showy crimson flowers that bloom for several days)

Acanthocereus pentagonus; Acanthocereus tetragonus; pitahaya; pitahaya cactus (cactus of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico having edible juicy fruit)

Holonyms ("cactus" is a member of...):

Cactaceae; cactus family; family Cactaceae (constituting the order Opuntiales)

 Context examples 

Princeton University scientists who were conducting their field work on the island of Daphne Major, noticed a non-native male bird — cactus finches — on the island in 1981.

(Researchers report rapid formation of new bird species in Galápagos islands, Wikinews)

Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Cactus finches have bigger body and beak as compared to other finch species living on the island at the time.

(Researchers report rapid formation of new bird species in Galápagos islands, Wikinews)

Researchers from Princeton University in the United States and Uppsala University in Sweden reported the new species evolved in just two generations, though this process had been believed to take much longer, due to breeding between an endemic Darwin finch, Geospiza fortes, and the immigrant cactus finch, Geospiza conirostris.

(Researchers report rapid formation of new bird species in Galápagos islands, Wikinews)