This plant, called bunny ears (Opuntia microdasys, Family Cactaceae), may look soft and touchable, but don't! The succulent flattened stem (cladode) of this platyopuntia is protected by areoles having innumerable glochids, irritating, deciduous, barbed leaf spines. The cladode, or pad, also called a joint, is a determinate shoot with helically arranged buds that develop sylleptically instead as short shoot bearing the leaf spines (glochids) rather than foliar leaves. Cladodes may become separated from the mother plant and clone via the production of adventitious roots. A single flower may be produced from any of the areoles, but in this and most species of cacti, one an areole has flowered, the shoot apex is used up, so growth of the areole has ended.

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