Designing with SucculentsHow to incorporate succulents and cacti into your garden design
Photo by : Anna Laurent , Joshua Tree National Park
With their chocolate - browned stems and fuzzy gilded arms , the teddy - bear chollas really do seem friendlier than other desert dwellers . They tend to turn in bunch formation , like modest guild in the moxie , serve as a bright audience to the sunlight ’s rise and fall in the desert sky . If they seem to be waiting for something , it is you — to wander by , graze one of their many arms , and become an unwitting Opuntia cholla disseminator . There are two things to recollect about the teddy - bear Opuntia cholla : first , their segmented branches are eager to detach , locomotion , and take root ; second , they are determined hitchhiker .
standardised to other species of cholla cacti , Opuntia bigeloviiwear an armor of slender , bristled spines . Their abrupt covering is peculiarly dense , which has the effect of obscuring the stem and shielding it from exposure to vivid sun . Unlike other cholla , however , the arms are eager to detach from the central chaff — a abbreviated encounter with the tiny barbs is enough to dislodge a sarcoid segment . This fragment quickly embeds in any passerby ; removal is painful and unmanageable . The Opuntia cholla trust to jaunt as far as it can , hitching a ride , because these easily fragmented base segments are its preferred method of reproduction .
When finally take away , the detached roast will take root and begin a novel colony . And it is a strategy that the teddy - bear cholla has evolved to rely on . While it does develop springtime flowers , the yellow - green blossoms produce fruit whose source are usually sterile . And so the vegetal arms are design to detach so easily that even a strong malarky can send the small section break down . Asexually multiply in this way of life , these cholla population can become dumb forests , sometimes composed of individuals that are in fact a exclusive clonal plant life , all develop from fallen , rooted branches .
As part of the desert environmental science , teddy - bear cholla plants are popular nesting land site for birds . Desert pack - rat also collect the fallen cholla arms , channel them back to their nest sites to build a sullen pile and discourage likely predators .
Opuntia bigeloviigrow in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts , on valley floors and desert hillside . Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California also hosts a lovely Cholla Cactus Garden , complete with a quarter - mile walkway through the fold .
Anna Laurent is a writer and producer of educational botanical medium . Her pic are useable for exposition and buy ather shop .
