GROWTH AND HABITATS
The Hedgehog cacti are of the easiest culture in out-of-door gardens, blossoming and fruiting profusely, but in greenhouse cultivation they rarely flower; they thrive in any ordinary clay loam with some gravel or coarse sand and with good drainage, and the desert species will even tolerate some alkali. The fruit looks like a mass of enormous bright red strawberries, and when cooled in the refrigerator, sliced and served with cream and sugar is delicious, and sought after as a great delicacy by the Indians and Mexicans. This marked resemblance has earned for Echinocereus Cacti the common name, also, of “Strawberry Cactus.” When the berries ripen, their spine clusters fall away or may be removed with the least effort. The writers have tasted this delicious fruit served cold and also as a sauce and made into jam.
Strawberry Cacti are among the most popular plants for southwestern cactus gardens and rock gardens because of their fine showy flowers, and their profuse blooming and fruiting. A single plant in the University of Arizona Cactus Garden during the present year had fifty full-blown flowers at one time and continued in blossom for fully two weeks. In culture the plants may be watered regularly once a month in the absence of rain during the growing season; they require little other care. They may be transplanted at any season provided the roots are not seriously injured, and when transplanted early in spring they blossom during that same season. Like other desert cacti, the Hedgehog or Strawberry Cactus grows best in sunny locations. The plants grow with single stems or in clumps, and from three inches to a foot and a half tall; others are solitary, and some in large flat masses or hemispherical mounds. The flowers are crimson and scarlet and pink and deep purple, and grow in heavy masses; some are funnel-shaped and bell-shaped.
As we start on our journey early in May, we travel down a long, broad, well paved highway, straight toward the rising sun. It is still quite cool, but the day will be blazing-hot before long. In the distance a blue haze hovers over Superstition Range for whose almost roadless cañons and draws we are bound. As we proceed along the highway, the cacti get thicker and thicker, and as far as the eye can see are many kinds of Cholla, Pincushion, and Barrel cacti. Here and there is a stranger to us. We are at last in a veritable museum of desert cacti and their flowers. It might be called the “Parade of the Cactus Flowers,” for they are all around and about us. We are hunting for the little Hedgehog, and indeed we find him in plenty. There are about sixty different varieties of this particular group of the Cactus Family—all very beautiful and interesting, and some of them hide away so carefully and select such forbidden haunts that it takes a long time to find them.
California Hedgehog Cactus (Echinocereus mojavensis)
Southeastern California, Southern Utah, Southern Nevada, and Northwestern Arizona
The California Hedgehog Cactus, or the Mojave Hedgehog, we espy first, and how could one miss seeing the scarlet bloom suffused with nopal red of this strange and beautiful Strawberry Cactus? The flaming blossoms, two or three inches long and an inch or so across, with short broad thick petals, borne singly though many grow on a single stem, remain open for several days at a time, and cause the California Hedgehog to become one of the most brilliant of the Strawberry group. The massive mounds of white-spined stems, two to six or seven inches long, often several hundred in a clump, covered with flashes of crimson flowers form a bright-colored zone which in full blossom is a splendid sight, and at a distance suggests a fire burning, with nothing to burn and sans smoke. This species is called the Desert-Afire, or Burning Cactus, or the Mojave Hedgehog as it was discovered on the Mojave Desert, and the name Echinocereus or Torch Cactus was first given to it. A close cousin is the Crimson Flowered Hedgehog Cactus of northern Arizona and New Mexico and Utah.
Golden Spined Strawberry Cactus (Echinocereus chrysocentrus)
Southeastern California, Western Arizona, and Northern Mexico
Here in Southern California thrives the Golden Spined Albino, a foot or so in height; the two-inch stems are furrowed with a dozen or so ridges, on the sides of which appear interlocking scallops, of a yellow or medium deep greenish cast. It has golden or light yellow spines like the pale yellow or cream-colored hair of the albino, hence the common name is quite apropos. It is to the circle of eight to thirteen radial spines with their lovely golden hue that the specific title chrysocentrus refers. The Golden Spined Strawberry Cactus with its pink and lavender-pink flowers is a rare and beautiful sight on the desert here before us, set in the dull tan or brown background of sand and rocks, and with scarcely a green leaf or other color now in sight. The inch-long fruit is densely spiny, covered with long, slender golden thorns, edible and sweet; it ripens in August, a month or so later than the fruit of the Echinocereus Engelmannii, its nearest relative.