California Cholla (Opuntia Parryi)
(Named in honor of Dr. C. C. Parry, who first collected it in 1851)
How to identify and how it grows
The California Cholla is a very interesting and fascinating plant and grows as several stems two to four feet tall, branching from the base and quite erect. These stems are cylindrical yellow-green joints six to twenty-four inches long and an inch thick. They bear the usual cactuslike spicules and spines. The spicules are a light yellow semicircular mass, while the five to twenty sharp, slender needlelike spines are crowded together, a half-inch to an inch long in many instances. These are yellow but turn brown with age and have thin light yellow sheaths. The flowers are yellow tinged with red and are an inch or more in diameter and length. The fruit is tubercled and very spiny, less than an inch long, and has the peculiar characteristic of becoming quite dry when ripe. This Cholla grows best in gravelly or rocky soils in the hot interior valleys of Southern California.
How to grow
Though not very attractive, this Cholla is occasionally grown in cactus collections because of its rather fascinating and peculiar characteristics noted above. Young plants may be transplanted at any season; also the species can be grown from cuttings and planted in the spring in moist soil. The plants thrive in sandy or gravelly soil and may be given a light irrigation once a month during droughty periods; they grow inside or outdoors and are not injured by temperatures twenty degrees below freezing.
Desert Christmas Cactus; Tasajillo (Opuntia leptocaulis)
How to identify and how it grows
Leptocaulis, or the Desert Christmas Cactus, is a plant growing as a dense low shrub only a foot high in many instances with numerous stems or joints ascending from the base, and in clumps three or four feet across. The little joints are sometimes only an inch long, growing to four inches in many cases, and are gray-green covered by numerous brown spicules forming in bundles. One sharp, slender, flattened, bent spine is present, a half-inch to two inches long, with a tan body and a yellow tip, covered with a white sheath which soon falls off. The flowers are a pale yellow and quite small, while the fruit forms in clusters near the ends of the branches, elliptical, about one inch long and scarlet. A fantastic phenomenon is sometimes noticed in this species: that of a branch growing directly out from a fruit.