I always have a camera with me, (as you probably know), even if I don’t have shooting in mind because you never know when a photo op is going to present itself. Such was the case yesterday when I was on my way back from Home Depot (bought Javelina fencing….more later) and saw this huge Barrel Cactus out of the corner of my eye. It was overcast so the color of the blooms was unbelievably vivid! Thankfully the road I was on has very little traffic, because I literally slammed on my brakes. After I got over the vision of a rear end collision, I pulled over to the side of the road, walked through barbed wire fence and fought off rattlesnakes (not really) to get these photos.
4 thoughts on “being prepared”
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Incredible!!! That is the most beautiful Barrel Cactus I have ever seen. However, I am not sure I would brave the barbed wire so I am really impressed. Hope your fingers have healed from the glochid experience.
Spirals are what I’m seeing in all three of your photos, especially in the middle one, where the lines of the cactus at the base curve upward to the circle of flowers and then there’s circular movement within that circle. My eye’s going clockwise throughout. Obviously not an Australian cactus, where I hear they rotate the opposite direction. I think the scientific name is Ferocactus coriolis . . . 🙂 — Carol Leigh
Spirals is what I was trying to emphasize so I appreciate the comment teach! I’m falling down on the job of identifying flora, though, In the case of our local Ferocactus, I’m never quite sure which they are but I’m leaning toward Ferocactus wislizeni aka Candy Barrel cactus. They can have yellow, orange or red flowers. The other choices are Ferocactus cylindraceus or Ferocactus acanthodes.
I missed the comments earlier – I’d have piped up had I not. This tall guy is Ferocactus cylindraceus. We do have the shorter, fatter F. wislizenii around here, too, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there was some hybridization going on. Both have orange or yellow flowers – and I’ve seen peach-colored blends. These, in fact, look like there’s been some gene exchange with the colors.
F. wislizenii also has red flowers, but only much further south and into Mexico. Not only are they shorter and fatter, they have fully recurved central spines. F. cylindraceus spines are curved, but not usually bent all the way back at the tip.
Ferocactus acanthodes? That’s another victim of taxonomic change. It’s been reduced to a synonym of F. cylindraceus.
BTW, those spiral patterns we see in cactus growth and flowering follow mathematical sequences called Fibonacci series, which is pretty cool. (I don’t know if I can put a link in the text here, so click on my name for more…)