Nature Sends a Wildflower Holiday Greetingby Lin EnnisHappy holidays from your local desert! The Desert Christmas Cholla isn't the potted Christmas cactus your grandmother got excited about, but better than that, it grows outdoors, on its own, and will happily spread to a handsome 5' X 5' in your yard if you find a sprig of it and poke one end into the dirt!
Technically not a wildflower, per se, I personally count all of the flowering, blooming, budding, fruiting cactus among my wildflower friends, and have included the local cacti in my wildflower book. My purpose is to encourage the use of wildflowers and native plants in order to preserve our natural habitat. The Desert Christmas Cholla, Opuntia leptocaulis, has peanut-kernel-sized red berries (fruit). It is the most slender of all chollas, with pencil-like stems changing from green to gray with age (like most of us). The spines grow quite long and are always sharp. Though it flowers April to June, I don't recall seeing its pale yellow blooms. The bright red fruit, however, is memorable: miniature prickly pears, sometimes in heavy clusters like so many champagne grapes, each berry less than ½ in. wide and slightly more than ½ in. long. Only Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma enjoy this red and green gem in December. Texans are evidently crabby that it twists around grasses and small shrubs, creating impenetrable thickets. As cries of "Remember the Alamo" fade into the distance, Arizonans are thinking about listing this native plant as endangered, because it harbors rare grasses in its shrub-like cavern. Most birds, including some quail and wild turkeys, love the succulent holiday treats of the Desert Christmas Cholla. So do white-tailed deer and a few other creatures who nibble its fruit or stems. The "berries" have been eaten raw and cooked into jam. Apaches mixed them with an unnamed beverage to produce narcotic effects. Look for this petite cactile delight this winter and add it to your own list of southwestern desert wildflower friends. Consider asking your local nursery for a two-inch potted cutting for your yard, to help perpetuate this delightful native species. ~~~~~~~~~~ Lin Ennis is a writer and amateur naturalist living in Sedona,
Arizona. Her love of wildflowers, and indeed all of nature,
is evident in her prolific contribution to several nature-related
websites, including, most notably, www.naturedomainsindex.com. |
|
