Flowers

Many of the little flower buds in this cluster on our ocotillo are now open. We saw them coming, but now they’re here. We have waited for quite some time for flowers since this specimen replaced the dead ocotillo last year.

This is one of three flower clusters currently opening on the ocotillo. There are seven or eight “canes” or stalks, but only two are showing flower clusters. The other cane with flowers actually has two clusters, one growing on a separate branch near the top of the cane.

Some of the more mature ocotillos we see around town and in the desert are showing flowers on nearly every cane. We’re hoping that our plant will follow suit in a year or two.

This picture was taken about mid morning when the light was fairly good to capture this view of the flower cluster. Click on the image to enlarge.

The ‘big guy’ out front has more flower buds. This is a small section of one of the upper arms where the buds get bigger each day. I tried to count the number of buds, but lost count when I could not quite see what was on top of the arms of the cactus. I got to about two dozen when I gave up.

This photo is of the same area on the same arm of the cactus I posted last week. I’m sure we will have dozens of flowers this year. Maybe we will get on the garage roof when the flowers start to open to get some photos from that vantage point.

Click on the image to enlarge.

These nice showy flowers are open on our Lawyer’s Tongue Cactus (opuntia engelmannii var. linguiformis). This cactus, which is now over three feet tall started from a single paddle that we rescued from a local park in 2011. We planted the paddle in a pot and it thrived in the courtyard until last winter when we transplanted it to the west side of the lot.

This is the first year that it is producing flowers and (hopefully) fruit. We would like to try and use the fruit in some recipes for syrup, juice or jellies. Maybe we will even make some Lawyer’s Tongue Margaritas this summer.

The first saguaro flower buds were sighted today and they are on our own big guy out front! We passed by the big saguaro today and I noticed what might be some flower buds on the crown of the cactus. Sure enough, when we got the pictures blown up big enough, we could see two or three buds.

In a few weeks, there will likely be many saguaro flowers open. I will be sure to post pictures of ours and any others that we might see around town. Yay for the Arizona State Flower! Click on the image to enlarge.

My little thimble cactus has lots of open flowers at this time. I had this one out back, but it is now in the courtyard because of the construction. It didn’t seem to mind the transition though, since the tiny flowers continue to open. Click on the image to enlarge.

The official botanical name of this cactus is Mammillaria fragilis. Here’s some information I found on the web at PlantOfTheWeek.org:

Mammillaria fragilis, or Thimble Cactus, is a clump-forming cactus native to Central Mexico. The clumps can exceed 12 inches (30 cm) in width in containers. Stems are up to 1 inch thick and are easily disarticulated. Tubercles are in 5-8 spirals with 12-16 white, radial spines, which are needle shaped and up to 5 mm long. The central spine are brown at the tips, pointed outward and very stout. This cactus is an easy one to grow and very showy in containers.

Blooming: In the greenhouse, our specimen blooms from late summer into fall, with very small pale yellow flowers about 1/2 inch (1.2 cm) long.

I can say that outdoors in the Arizona high desert that our specimen starts blooming in April.

This interesting photo is of a cluster of cholla flowers in bloom just behind the wall next to the little wash. I liked the appearance of the crimson-tipped yellow flowers framed by the spiky stems of cactus.

Our friend, Crotalus tells us that this is a buckhorn cholla and that there are dozens of varieties of the cylindropuntia family of cacti. Click on the image to enlarge.

This nice little barrel cactus (species unknown) has almost a complete ring of flowers around its crown. Each station where a flower bud appears can be traced back to the crown of the cactus by following the smooth curves that connect the fuzzy peaks along the top. Click on the image to enlarge.

Bob posted some information about mathematical formations in nature along with a photo of this very cactus without flowers a couple of years ago. Just like in the image above, the post showed examples of Fibonacci spirals, both natural and man made.