Southern California
GOLDEN PRICKLY PEAR (Opuntia Covillei)
We are approaching the lovely Santa Monica range in Southern California. Mt. San Bernardino with his crown of snow towers in the distance; Mt. Baldy with his white head bald almost the entire year round, we perceive even farther west; and magnificent old San Gorgonio rears his stately crest far above all the surrounding peaks. This is one of the most beauteous spots in Southern California. The vast depths of that great natural amphitheater near Redlands and Riverside as viewed from Smiley Heights form a panorama gorgeous beyond description, with every color of the rainbow brilliantly present, a marvelous thrilling picture painted against the landscape far and near: marvelous in its splashes of purples and greens and pinks and orange-reds against the somber background of the grand old mountains; thrilling in the vastness of the limitless panorama spread out before us on all sides, as we stand here on Smiley Heights gazing into the great cañons below, which seem to magnetize us against our will and to draw us down into their depths by the sheer force of distance immeasurable. Truly a fit setting for our little Opuntia Covillei, playing his humble part in all this gorgeous portraiture of plant and flower, mountain and valley and rocky cliff; and with the touch of the Master Artist he takes his modest place in the great aurora borealis of the desert. Bright yellow and nearly four inches long are his large beautiful blooms, toning into the green of the stigma lobes in a happy combination of Nature’s making, and forming, over the two- or three-foot stems with their pale blue-green joints or dull green pearlike appendages, a becoming aureole of gold, quite dazzling in the brilliant sunlight. Sometimes he grows in dense thickets several yards across and fringed with thick clusters of inch-long brown and yellowish white spines and spicules, sharp and needlelike, harshly repulsing the daring tourist who presumes to pluck his beautiful blossoms too rashly.
Flapjack Prickly Pear (Opuntia chlorotica)
Southern California, Arizona, Lower California, Northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Nevada
We are nearing the end of our long quest for the brilliant Prickly Pears, having crossed the Arizona and California deserts on our way, dipped down into southern Texas and Northern Mexico, and now are intent on finding a distinctive growth here in southwestern California called Opuntia chlorotica. Light purple is the fruit of this typical cactus, the stems yellow or light green; straw-colored and brownish are the slender bristlelike spines, translucent yellow the spicules. Almost a gay rainbow of itself, chlorotica graces the mountain cañons and foothills of six great sections of the vast southwestern desert. A short trunk, half a foot or a foot tall, branches into many jointed “flapjacks” six to ten inches long and about as wide, which combine to form a compact rounded head three to six feet high. The scaly fissured faces of the pearlike basal joints so typical of the prickly pear are light brown and purplish, the others pale green and bluish green; the slender yellowish spicules are not quite half an inch long, the bristling spines a trifle longer. The bloom, as of so many of the prickly pear species, is of a light lemon-yellow with a brilliant orange-red center, about two and one-half inches long and across; like others of this clan it opens early in the morning, closing when the late afternoon shadows begin to spell the end of the hot desert day. Seldom appearing in clumps, generally growing alone, chlorotica delights to cover the foothills and low mountain cañons with her pretty lemon blossoms, her short stout trunks, and their numerous flat pearlike joints.
Porcupine Prickly Pear (Opuntia hystricina)
Northern Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada
As we approach Los Angeles, California, we recall a peculiar little growth in northern Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico called Opuntia hystricina; also the Porcupine Prickly Pear, its long slender needlelike spines, reddish or red-brown, giving the plant a shaggy appearance strongly resembling that bristling little animal. In fact the name of the species hystricina comes from the Greek word for “porcupine.” Only a foot or so tall, its thorny stems spread out into loose clumps, the flat hairy joints, five or six inches long, looking just like so many bristling young porcupines; then with a crescent mass of light yellowish spicules an eighth-inch long or less, and six to ten finely grooved white and brownish spines, encircled sometimes with white and brown bands. In lovely contrast appear the beautiful large purple blossoms, three inches long and with as great a spread when fully expanded in April or May, opening but once, then closing in late afternoon never to open again. Thriving in the clay loam and gravelly soils of mountains and rocky cañons in northern Arizona and Nevada, ranging far up from five to seven thousand feet, this hardy cactus will endure temperatures even below zero without the slightest injury.