Species Notes:Comment from Dave Ferguson -Associate Curator, Rio Grande Botanic Garden:
It is difficult to tell for sure, but it looks like two species in this photo. The greener spinier one on the right is true O. tapona. The one on the left closer to the label looks like O. comonduensis. The two are not the same thing at all. O. tapona will grow into a small bushy tree in cultivation. O. comonduensis is pubescent and lower and smaller; it is similar in many ways to O. decumbens, or to a spineless O. pycnacantha. The flower photo appears to be on the O. comonduensis. I have rarely seen a true O. tapona in cultivation and labelled as such. Collectors seem to go for the smaller pubescent mostly spineless and often purplish ones, so they almost always get O. comonduensis and ignore O. tapona. Not sure how the names ever got lumped together as synonyms; they are very different.
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