I took pictures of these flowers over the past week. Most of them at or near our house. The flowers (in order) in this slide show are:
Click on the image to advance to the next picture.
Once you get past the inhospitable cactus spikes and look closely at their beautiful flowers, you can see just how delicate and beautiful these desert plants can be. This is a close-up of one of the three Argentine Giant Cactus (Echinopsis candicans) flowers that bloomed on Monday. I took this image on Tuesday morning before the flowers wilted. Click on the image to enlarge.
I saved one of the flowers in hopes of developing into a fruit from which I can extract seeds. That is, if the javelinas don’t eat it first!
Beautiful! My Argentine Giant (echinopsis candicans) cactus flowers have opened this evening. I took this photo at a little after six this evening. These flowers will still be open in the morning, but will fade soon after. This is our once-a-year blooming for this cactus we installed shortly after having the place landscaped in 2011. The three pods last evening were still unopened, but the flowers showed up late today. Click on the image to enlarge.
There is an agave flower stalk about four hundred feet east of our driveway. I don’t know the timing on agave flowers, but I imagine this will be sprouting flower pods in the near future. We have been watching the flower stalk grow over the past several weeks and today I estimate it to be about fifteen feet tall. I will be sure and get flower pictures when the agave finally starts producing them. Click on the image to enlarge.
While I was up on the hill at the back of our property last week, I found several more of the Arizona Queen of the Night cacti. This one, in particular, is very weird; the woody part of the cactus comes out of the ground at the lower left of the image and winds up and across the branches of a palo verde, then descends toward the right side of the image before splitting in two and connecting to two fleshy stems rising upward. Roll your mouse over the image to highlight the strange routing of this specimen.
Realizing that the image above is lacking in detail, I uploaded a larger highlighted image here. I also uploaded images of the other three queens I found up on the hill here and here.
Since I know that this variety of cactus has a ball root, I imagine the big one must have a whopper. I read somewhere the roots could weigh in at hundreds of pounds.
The ocotillos all over town are in bloom. I finally found an ocotillo near our favorite Mexican restaurant with canes low enough for me to get a close-up of the little red flowers. Click on the image to enlarge.
We had the landscaper install an ocotillo a couple of years ago, but sadly it seems to have died. The plan is to get them to replace it this summer. Hopefully I can take this kind of picture next year in our yard.
When I learned that it is legal to move protected native vegetation on our own property without permission from the Arizona Department of Agriculture, I selected this nice little hedgehog cactus up near the north property line as a candidate to move to the lower lot. It has only four lobes and will probably be light enough for me to dig up and carry to its new location. Succulents can be quite heavy since they consist of hydrated flesh and can contain several quarts of water in each lobe.
As soon as this guy stops flowering in June, I will carefully dig around it to be able to lift it out of the ground and into the wheelbarrow for transportation to the lower lot. I took this photo this morning. Click on the image to enlarge.
