Designing with SucculentsHow to incorporate succulents and cacti into your garden design
exposure by : Anna Laurent , Joshua Tree National Park
With their chocolate - brown stems and fuzzy golden arms , the teddy - bear chollas really do seem friendlier than other desert denizen . They tend to grow in clustered formations , like small club in the gumption , serving as a hopeful audience to the sun ’s rise and fall in the desert sky . If they appear to be waiting for something , it is you — to roam by , graze one of their many arms , and become an unknowledgeable cholla disseminator . There are two things to commemorate about the teddy - bear cholla : first , their segmental subdivision are eager to come off , travel , and take root ; second , they are determined hitchhiker .
Similar to other species of cholla cacti , Opuntia bigeloviiwear an armour of slender , pungent backbone . Their penetrative covering is particularly thick , which has the effect of obscuring the stem and shield it from photograph to intense sunlight . Unlike other Opuntia cholla , however , the arms are eager to detach from the central stalking — a brief confrontation with the tiny barbs is enough to shift a fleshy segment . This fragment chop-chop embeds in any passerby ; removal is terrible and difficult . The cholla hope to travel as far as it can , hitching a ride , because these easily fragmentize stem segment are its preferent method of reproduction .
When finally removed , the detached junction will take root and begin a novel colony . And it is a strategy that the teddy - bear Opuntia cholla has acquire to rely on . While it does develop springtime blossom , the yellowed - green prime get fruit whose seeds are unremarkably sterile . And so the vegetative arms are designed to come away so easily that even a warm steer can send the low segments tumbling . Asexually reproducing in this fashion , these cholla populations can become dense forests , sometimes composed of mortal that are in fact a single clonal works , all grow from fallen , stock-still branches .
As part of the desert environmental science , teddy - bear cholla plants are democratic nesting site for birds . Desert plurality - squealer also pull in the fallen Opuntia cholla arms , run them back to their nest sites to build a minatory pile and discourage likely predators .
Opuntia bigeloviigrow in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts , on vale floor and desert hillsides . Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California also hosts a lovely Cholla Cactus Garden , complete with a tail - naut mi walkway through the faithful .
Anna Laurent is a author and manufacturer of educational botanical culture medium . Her photo are uncommitted for exposition and buy ather workshop .
