DELICATE PRICKLY PEAR (Opuntia delicata)
Purple Prickly Pear (Opuntia santa rita)
Southern Arizona
WHIPPLE’S CHOLLA (Opuntia Whipplei)
PURPLE PRICKLY PEAR (Opuntia santa rita)
We are approaching the beautiful Santa Rita Mountains not far from Tucson, Arizona, nearing also the end of our long afternoon’s work, for the blue and purple haze that betokens the close of a hot desert day is gathering around the distant peaks and the sun hangs low over the horizon, seeming loath to bid farewell to mountain and desert cañons and to weary mortals here below. A symphony in purple and yellow greets our tired eyes and brightens our jaded spirits as we motor slowly along the highroad; and we stop to get a closer view of this handsomest of all the brilliant Opuntia, the Purple Prickly Pear. A dash of purple in the sepals tones into golden yellow in petals and stamens of the large beautiful blooms, three inches across when full open and nearly four inches in length, the lemon and deep yellow flowers in vivid contrast to the bright purple joints of santa rita in the spring. Then in summer the densely glaucous gray-blue joints form a striking color scheme together with the bright purple fruit. Two to five feet tall, the plants branch from a short thick trunk in numerous stemlike appendages which look like so many “flapjacks” on the desert. They prefer the gravelly or rocky soils at levels of three to five thousand feet, and grow over drab bajadas and somber foothill slopes near the high Santa Ritas, where they were discovered by Dr. David Griffiths and named for this majestic range which towers in sight of these brilliantly beautiful and slender-spined pearlike cacti. These rare plants are finding a place in many gardens throughout the Southwest, and even abroad in England they may be grown satisfactorily in indoor cactus gardens.