A type of prickly pear cactus native to southwestern North America, also called jumping cholla.
From Spanish 'choya' or 'cholla,' which comes from a Nahuatl (Aztec) origin. The word traveled from indigenous Mesoamerican languages through Spanish colonizers into English.
Indigenous Mesoamerican peoples named this plant thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and their word survived Spanish conquest to become standard in English—a linguistic victory of indigenous knowledge.
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