Plants trees or shrubs, erect, rarely forming mats, usually many branched. Stem segments firmly attached to easily dislodged, straight to curved, cylindric to slightly clavate, 2-40(-50) long, 0.3-5.5 cm in diameter, usually glabrous, tuberculate. Areoles elliptic, circular, ovate, obovate, or obdeltate to rhombic, 0.7-5 mm diam., bearing short feltlike wool of various colors, white, yellow, or tan to brown; spines with whole epidermis sheath deciduous; major spines not or only basally angularly flattened; glochids usually in tufts at adaxial margin, yellow to brown. Flowers usually bisexual, sometimes functionally pistillate, radially symmetric; outer tepals green with margins tinged color of the inner; inner tepals yellow-green, yellow to bronze, or red to magenta, spatulate, emarginate-apiculate. Pollen spinulo-punctate, not reticulate (cylindropuntioid type). Fruits, if fleshy, green, yellow, or scarlet, sometimes tinged red to purple or, if dry, tan to brown, cylindric to subspheric, sometimes clavate, fleshy or dry, spineless or spiny; areoles. Seeds pale yellow to tan or gray, flattened to subspheric, angular to squarish or circular, often warped, 1.9-7 mm, commonly bearing 1-4 large depressions per side due to pressure from adjacent developing seeds, glabrous; funicular girdle smooth or with low marginal ridge. x = 11.
Cylindropuntia includes about 35 speices and is native to the United States, Mexico, and West Indies but is now established in South America (Chile, Ecuador, Peru) and Africa. It is widely cultivated.