Editing Eastern Prickly Pear (section)

==== Status and Description ====

My field exploration of the Audubon Coastal Center at Milford Point has revealed that ''Opuntia humifusa'' are a "featured" attraction at this preserve.  The colony of cacti is not only exceptionally easy to find, but the boardwalk that traverses the dune area seems to have been constructed, in part, with the specific intention of exposing preserve visitors to wild cacti.

The colony of ''O. humifusa'' on Milford Point covers approximately 1/2-acre and includes at least 19 plants, however the actual number of plants is likely to be at least 10% higher than this estimate.  Most of these cacti were "individuals", which is to say that there were very few which had formed large clonal clusters.  

These findings stand in stark contrast to those of the colonies that I have discovered on inland ridges, which are generally isolated to a very small area (less than 50 square feet) and tend to be centered upon a clonal cluster, with "individual" plants accounting for less than half of the bio-mass of each colony.

The cacti colony at Milford Point was interspersed amongst dune shrubs, short coniferous trees and a variety of herbaceous plants.  In some cases, ''O. humifusa'' were found growing around the bases of trees and shrubs, while in other instances they were growing upon clearings in the dune with a certain margin of open sand between other plant life.  This, again, stands in stark contrast to inland mountain sites, upon which ''O. humifusa'' grows in areas with an exceptionally low diversity of trees and plants.