Transplant at any season. Joints broken off and partly covered with soil grow at once into new plants. Young plants also grow quite easily from seed, and ripe fruit can be gathered from the plant almost the year round. The plant has a very wide distribution, grown indoors and out of doors in almost any kind of soil with no care except to water monthly during dry periods. It is not injured by temperatures as low as zero, and with protection in winter can be grown in much colder climates.
Buckhorn Cholla (Opuntia acanthocarpa)
(Named acanthocarpa from its very spiny fruit)
How to identify and how it grows
The Buckhorn Cholla is a dwarf tree or shrub composed of many stems ascending from the base and forming into a compact head of dangerously thorny branches, very woody in appearance. These branches or joints are four inches or more in length, cylindrical and yellow-green. They are tubercled and have a fringe of yellowish or red-brown spicules, very short and sharp, and many loose clusters of fierce red-brown thorns about an inch long, partly sheathed. The flowers are two inches or more in length, greenish yellow with the tips suffused with red. The fruit is pear-shaped and very thorny, and has the peculiarity noted quite often among Cholla of becoming dry when fully ripe. This species bears its fruit in June and July.
How to grow
Young plants grow readily if set out in the spring in rocky or gravelly soil with occasional watering to moisten the soil until the plants become established. Cuttings grow quite easily if planted in spring, and also the plant can be grown from seed sown in sandy soil in pots or flats. This species is not injured by a temperature of twenty degrees below freezing and grows readily outside or indoors.
Golden Spined Jumping Cholla; Teddy Bear Cactus (Opuntia Bigelovii)
(Named for Dr. J. M. Bigelow, an early enthusiastic student of southwestern botany)