*2.1. Plant Material*

Two cladodes ecotypes of *Opuntia ficus-indica* (L.) Mill. (Figure 2) were analysed in this study: one supposed to be a cultivar with the hybrid origin, which often escapes, from cultivation and behave like an invasive species, it is almost spineless and it was accepted with the name *Opuntia ficus-indica cult.* (*OFI cult*.); and the second one with white and hard spines, long about 3–4 cm, sharing some characters with *Opuntia amyclaea* Ten., *O. maxima* Miller and *O. ficus-barbarica*. Hereafter we will use for the spiny ecotype the name *Opuntia ficus-indica* (L.) Mill. *s.l.* (*OFI s.l.*), because the studied local area lacks of taxonomic and nomenclatural study of the genus *Opuntia*.

**Figure 2.** Two ecotypes of *Opuntia ficus-indica* (L.) Mill cladodes: ( **A**) *Opuntia ficus indica cult*. and (**B**) *Opuntia ficus-indica* (L.) Mill s.l.

The cladodes from both *O ficus-indica* were collected between June–August 2012 in Calabria (South of Italy). All the cladodes, covered by spines and multicellular hairs or trichomes, were manually cleaned, cut into small pieces and then homogenized (Figure 3) with a TYPE HR 2064 PHILIPS-600 W and frozen until analysis.

**Figure 3.** Homogenized from fresh samples of *OFI cult.* (**A**) and *OFI s.l.* (**B**).
