(Named for J. M. Stanly, artist of the Mexican Boundary Survey)
How to identify and how it grows
The Cursed Cholla, or Devil Cholla, is very appropriately named. Plants grow with prostrate and creeping stems, forming impenetrable masses several feet across. The stems are from a common center with the tips ascending, and the joints, which are as much as six inches long, are club-shaped and tubercled. The spines are very numerous and stout, also very sharp and swordlike, and will cause grief unless one is very careful. They grow a little more than two inches long, are a light yellow, and have short sheaths over their tips. The flowers are about three inches long and are yellow, and the fruit, which is club-shaped and about three inches long, is covered with white cottony hairs and needlelike spicules. These plants grow in the sandy soils of the desert areas of southern New Mexico and southern Arizona and adjacent old Mexico.
How to grow
Either prostrate rooted stems or joints planted at any season grow into plants. The seed sown in moist sandy soil grow easily. The plants grow in sandy or gravelly clay soils and should be watered monthly until well established. Temperatures as low as zero do not injure the plants, but with lower temperatures they should be protected. They grow outdoors or indoors.
Whipple’s Cholla (Opuntia Whipplei)
(Named after Lieutenant Whipple, in charge of the Whipple Expedition of 1853 and 1854)
How to identify and how it grows
Whipple’s Cholla grows farther north than any other species of Cholla, and reaches three feet in height, composed of several stems that form a low compact clump. The joints are two to ten inches long, are a light green suffused with purple, and are covered with tubercles arranged in spirals. The tan spicules are very short, about an eighth of an inch long and appear in tufts. The two to five spines are a half-inch to an inch long, one of them longer than the others. The thorns have yellowish tips and light red-brown bodies covered with loose papery sheaths of a silvery sheen. The beautiful yellow flowers are very showy, about two inches long, appearing from April to June; the fruit is about two inches long with prominent tubercles. Whipplei grows in northern Arizona, southern Utah, New Mexico, and western Colorado, and will be found in loamy, gravelly soils in oak, juniper, pine, and prairie-grass lands between altitudes of five and seven thousand feet.